New Delhi: 'The Three Musketeers', in its 2011 version, has nothing new to offer in the story line – but in 3D it is an absolute delight.
If you are one of those who like old world adventure – Pirates of the Caribbean style – no lasers, no scientific mumbo jumbo, no transforming monster trucks morphing in to robots, just good old school sword fencing, antique revolvers and gunpowder – then 'The Three Musketeers' is a perfectly good movie.
Directed by Paul WS Anderson, a rendition of the 2003 movie version of Alexandre Dumas' novel – 'The Three Musketeers' or 'Les Trois Mousquetaires'. The 2011 version starring Matthew Macfadyen as Athos, Luke Evans as Aramis, Ray Stevenson as Porthos and Logan Lerman as D'Artagnan – is convincing in its screen representations of Dumas' paper heroes. Replacing the 2003 power cast of Charlie Sheen (Aramis), Kiefer Sutherland (Athos), Oliver Platt (Porthos) and Chris O'Donnell (D'Artagnan) – the 2011 musketeers are smooth and charming, but they fail to convince at times.
The opening shots of Athos, Aramis and Porthos along with Milady De Winter (Milla Jovovich) are stunning – one emerges from the Venice canals, one lands on a gondola from a builging top and the other rips the chains out from the wall in prison while the lady slides through blades and balls with spikes inside the vault to find the blueprints for a war machine. But as soon as the musketeers are drugged by Milady, and the plans sold off by her to a higher bidder – The Duke of Buckingham (Orlando Bloom), they lie on the floor helpless cheated in love and luck. From then on – as the viewer can only predict – the luck of the French king’s warriors go downhill. When D'Artagnan – the young, cocky, brash wannabe Musketeer arrives in Paris a year later – the heroes are just shadows of themselves.
Packed off on a horse called Buttercup from his small home in the rolling greens of France somewhere, his father, an ex-musketeer, bids farewell to D’Artagnan with some old school swashbuckling lessons – being a musketeer is all in the heart and how his opponent would not be as noble as him in times of life or death. The boy wastes no time in picking a fight with the head of the Cardinal guards Rochefort (Mads Mikkelsen) and asking him to apologise to his horse. Left with a flesh wound, D'Artagnan stumbles in to Paris and bumps in to all the three ex-heroes one after another in smooth succession and challenges them all.
The musketeers meet at a spot in town with D'Artagnan ready to teach the impudent boy a lesson – but they are surrounded by The Cardinal guards. D’Artagnan takes them on without forethought making the older men join him reluctantly. 40 against 4 and the 4 ultimately stand amidst applause from the town people. Porthos says – "I forgot what this felt like…"
Though the musketeers allow D'Artagnan to stay in their house it appears that the young boy has taken them under his wing than the other way around. D'Artagnan’s brash behaviour is a tad bit unbelievable. He does not seem one bit awed by the three older men who he wants to be like. But the role of D'Artagnan is endearing and as a boy who is growing up with every fight, learning his lessons well and slow – Logan Lerman has done well.
D'Artagnans' lady love and Queen Anne's handmaiden, Constance (Gabriella Wilde) is rather pretty but terrible at romance. One cannot quite place whether she runs to D'Artagnan to save the Queen out of love or out of simple convenience. She is unconvincing in fear, in surprise and in love. Even the sharp witty lines that she is supposed to pit against D'Artagnans' impudence fall flat.
Juno Temple as Queen Anne and Freddie Fox as King Louis XIII are the well picked child rulers of France. They are children with the heavy weight of ruling a country at the brink of war with England – they flounder, make rash decisions and are delightfully temperamental. The scene where King Louis is supposed to reprimand the three Musketeers and D'Artagnan for killing 40 of the Cardinal soldiers is the perfect example. The King is so greatly impressed by the bravado of the men that he orders rewards for them and a new suit for D’Artagnan. He is chided by Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz) every second for not being harsh; as a King should be in punishing the wrong. King Louis simply smirks and tells the four to stop killing the Cardinal guards for soon there would be none left! Touche!
The crux of the movie lies in the airships – the one that the Duke of Buckingham builds with the plans stolen from the musketeers by Milady and the one the French make with the same plans passed on to them by her. The diamonds of Queen Anne are stolen by Milady and placed in the tower of London, love letters are placed in her drawer from the Duke of Buckingham and the child King thinks he has been cuckolded. "Does 'consummated' mean what I think it means?" he asks sulking to the Cardinal.
The diamonds must be recovered and returned to the Queen in 5 days time to stop a potential war between an angry king and the shrewd Duke and the Cardinal coming to power in France.
The action sequences that the movie rests on are not mind blowing. We have seen all of this before. The fight between the airships look like a sequence out of the Pirates of the Caribbean – but only they are hovering miles above the ground. The sword fight between D'Artagnan and Rochefort is lukewarm, even the three musketeers coming back in to their real elements is not explored in its full potential by the director.
With the day saved, the musketeers with a new member in tow, can go back to saying – 'Tous pour un, Un pour tous!' – the famed – 'All for one and One for all!'
Orlando Bloom as the evil Duke of Buckingham is only ‘passable’. Though he had claimed in an interview that he was itching to play a ‘bad guy’ – the Duke is only borderline evil. He’s sarcastic, he’s sharp and he’s furious by the end of it all – but ‘evil’ – is still a few movie roles away for Bloom. He makes a splendid elf and a very good pirate – he should stick to that. But his entry in to King Louis’ castle in the stunning air ship that gets Louis putting – "I want one of those!" – is a visual delight.
3D saves the movie for the story and the execution lack the punch. We were expecting some more death defying stunts from the 4 musketeers.
With Milady fished out of the English Channel and The Duke rushing full throttle towards France with his whole armada and another lot of the imposing air ships – a part two to this adventure could be on the cards. Let's just hope that they don’t need 3D to save it.
Comments
0 comment