‘The Three Musketeers’ Review: All for What?

Paul W.S Anderson and Milla Jovovich have done it. The husband and wife duo responsible for the Resident Evil trilogy have decided to expand their horizons and tackle some classic literature with The Three Musketeers. It’s an action-packed, over-the-top, preposterous flick that does absolutely no justice to the original material. I’m pretty sure that this is not what author Alexandre Dumas would have expected.

The plot and characters are (kind of) the same as the original novel: D’Artagnan (Logan Lerman, no doubt still riding the high of Percy Jackson) leaves his home of Gascony for Paris, in hopes of becoming one of the legendary musketeers. Even before he reaches the city’s outskirts, he gets into trouble with Captain Rochefort (Mads Mikkelsen), the leader of Cardinal Richelieu’s (Christoph Waltz) guards. He manages to escape with the help of Milady de Winter (Milla Jovovich, in yet another hot-girl-kicks-ass role). D’Artagnan soon catches the eyes of the Three Muskateers, Athos (Matthew Macfadyen), Porthos (Ray Stevenson) and Aramis (Luke Evans). On the sidelines is the evil Duke of Buckingham (Orlando Bloom) waiting to wreck havoc on France.

Fighting, fighting, and more fighting ensues. The relentless action gets boring quite quickly as the audience finds itself sitting through yet another scene of D’Artagnan/The Musketeers/Milady/Buckingham/Rochefort fighting with one another. Sometimes, overblown action can be awesome, especially in the vein of something like Tarantino. The action in The Three Musketeers only succeeded in giving me a headache – add the 3D and it’s a recipe for nausea.

Action! And more action. And more action. | Poster courtesy of Summit Entertainment

The worst thing about the film is that it makes no sense. It’s a strange mélange of steampunk, Resident Evil, and Pirates of the Caribbean– all mixed together with a dash of girl-power.  The Three Musketeers makes no claims to be faithful to the book, but it’s hard to suspend disbelief in the face of flying airships, booby-trapped rooms complete with laser beams, and Milla Jovovich doing ridiculous stunts while wearing a full-length ballroom gown. For a film supposedly set in the seventeenth century, it veers far off the mark. What’s more, it never really returns to the story’s roots – it’s as if Anderson got so caught up with the fighting and explosions that he forgot he was making a film about the Three Musketeers.

The acting isn’t anything to write home about either. If the film was aiming for campy, then only one of the actors in the cast succeeds – Freddie Fox, who plays the incompetent King Louis XIII. While all the actors take their roles way too seriously in a film that is absurd at best, Fox manages to ham up his theatrics and makes himself into almost a caricatures of his real-life counterpart. As the short, preening, strawberry-blond teenage king of France, he is the only one who brings a measure of real entertainment to the film, achieving a sense of comedic ridiculousness when he has a hissy fit over his fashion choices.

Milla Jovovich plays yet another version of the role that seems to define her: the tough but beautiful woman who captures the hearts of all the men around her while kicking their asses at the same time. She plays with swords, leaps from roofs, and jumps off airships in heels and a dress. I’m all for women being action heroes, but having watched Jovovich play the same character over and over again, it would be refreshing for her to play someone else. As is, she risks becoming a parody.

The distinct lack of chemistry among the cast is yet another issue – both the romantic tension and the brotherly love between the musketeers. Between the lukewarm kisses that D’Artagnan shares with Constance Bonacieux (Gabriella Wilde) to the awkwardness between Milady and Athos that teeters between love and hate, there is never any spark between any of them. Likewise, the bromance between the musketeers never fully develops between the three men.

Critics usually start sharpening their claws whenever another Paul W.S. Anderson film pops into existence. Usually I would leave him alone – he is what he is, and if he wants to do films based solely on spectacle, then that’s his prerogative. With The Three Musketeers, though, it is hard to overlook the fact that this film is supposed to be based on a piece of classic literature, not in a video game universe. The film loses interest in itself by the halfway mark, and becomes one giant explosion after another as it loses sight of the storyline. Anderson bit off more than he can chew here, and that’s what annoys me. He should probably stick to what he’s best at and leave stories with an actual plot to people who are more capable. Even more annoying: the end of the movie is a setup for an inevitable sequel – another movie not worth looking forward to.

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