A review of The Three Musketeers (2011), directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

Back during the late fifties, I got hooked as kid on swashbuckling movies with Errol Flynn, Tyrone Powell, Gene Kelly in The Three Musketeers, the great Jose Ferrer in Cyrano De Bergerac, and Stewart Granger in Scaramouche. I loved it when the hero took on the major villain with a sword in hand, fighting a duel to the death…sometimes fighting several men at one time like Flynn did in The Sea Hawk. Even after fifty years, I still get excited when going to see a swashbuckling movie. The last two that come to mind are The Mask of Zorro and The Legend of Zorro. Now, there’s a remake of The Three Musketeers that’s been directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, who did The Resident Evil movies with his wife, Milla Jovovich.

Before I went to see this film, I read three-or-four really bad reviews about the movie. The reviews didn’t detour me from wanting to see the film so I went any way. I watched it as I would have a Saturday matinee movie when I was a kid. In that respect, it was definitely a fun movie and the sword-fighting scenes were excellent. Now, a good bit of the film has nothing whatsoever to do with the novel by Dumas. Keep that in mind if you go to see it. This movie takes place in its own little universe, and a lot of the main actors look so young that they reminded me of children. That’s how old I’ve gotten. Still, I found myself getting caught up in the plot, which is basically the same as in the novel and the previous films based on The Three Musketeers, but with a number of changes to update it for the young crowd of movie goers.

The film movie opens up with the three Musketeers sneaking into the Vatican vaults to steal the diagrams by Da Vinci for a war machine that is actually a flying dirigible. The Musketeers have to take out Vatican guards, endure booby traps, and then betrayal from their accomplice, Milady de Winter and her new employer, the Duke of Buckingham, who’s sporting an Elvis Presley hairdo. This sets up a number of scenes later in the film between all the actors and the conflict of this very personal betrayal.

Moving from the Vatican, the film then cuts to a very young looking D’Artagnan (played by Logan Lerman), fencing with his father, a former Musketeer, out in the field of their farm in Gascony, France. It’s a good way to show us what D’Artagnan is capable of with a sword. Anyway, D’Artagnan leaves the farm and heads to Paris with the intention of joining the King’s Musketeers. On the journey, he stops at an inn and encounters the Comte de Rochefort (played by Mads Mikkelsen, who was in King Arthur and Casino Royale) and his men. When the Comte makes fun of his horse, D’Artagnan challenges the Frenchman to a duel. Unfortunately, while D’Artagnan prepares for a sword fight, the Comte pulls out a musket-type handgun and shoots him in the shoulder. Only the intervention of Milady de Winter (played by the gorgeous Milla Jovovich, star of the Resident Evil movies) prevents the Comte from killing the boy. D’Artagnan, however, vows to get revenge against the Comte at a later date. This is more fuel for later scenes.

When D’Artagnan eventually arrives in Paris, he somehow spots the Comte in a crowd of people on the very first day there and chases after him, only to bump into Athos, Porthos and Aramis. The three encounters lead to three challenges for later in the day. D’Artagnan no sooner arrives at the designated spot for the three duels when Athos shows up with Porthos and Aramis trailing behind him to act as seconds. The three musketeers are amazed that D’Artagnan has been in town for less than a day, yet already three duels arranged with them. The young Gascon doesn’t care. He’s ready to fight all three of them together if need be, but that doesn’t happen. The guards for the Cardinal Richelieu (played by the very talented Christopher Waltz) arrive to arrest all four men for dueling. You see dueling has been outlawed by King Louis XIII because too many of French noblemen are being killed off by each other. So, since there are forty guards, the three Musketeers and D’Artagnan decide to take them on in a free-for-all. And, boy, is it a free-for-all. Though I doubt there were fighters back during the early 1600s who could do the stunts we see in the movie, it was still fun to watch. The sword-fighting choreography was excellent. During this fight, D’Artagnan meets Constance on the sideline, who’s one of the ladies in waiting for the Queen of France. Needless to say, the boy falls madly in love with her and is more than willing to do whatever she asks of him. Ah, young love!

Further down the road, the three Musketeers and D’Artagnan are called before King Louis XIII to be punished at Cardinal Richelieu’s request. Upon hearing the four men took on forty of the Cardinal’s guards, the king decides to reward them instead. That doesn’t make the Cardinal happy, who is determined to rid himself of the Queen of France and her weak husband. He devises a plan with the help of Milady de Winter to set up the queen in a scandal. They plant love letters from the Duke of Buckingham in her desk drawer and supposedly stash a very expensive necklace that was given to her by the king in Buckingham’s private safe in the Tower of London. Richelieu then entices King Louis to throw a ball and to have his queen wear the missing necklace. The three Musketeers and D’Artagnan are asked by Constance to retrieve the necklace in time for the ball so the queen won’t be executed by an angry, cuckolded king. This is a dire change from the novel and other films because the Queen of France was having an affair with the Duke and did give him a necklace in order to display her passion for him.

Of course, D’Artagnan and his three comrades will have to fight the Duke of Buckingham. The Duke and the Musketeers have a grudge to settle from the beginning of the movie. The fight with Buckingham and his men include the use of flying dirigibles (gigantic floating devices attached to the top of war ships armed with cannons) as it does with the fight against the Comte de Rochefort and the Cardinal’s guards, who are attempting to prevent the Musketeers from reaching the queen in time.

The ending of the film is set up nicely, though unrealistically, for a sequel. One of the main characters manages to survive a fall into the ocean from several hundred feet up in the air and then is miraculously saved from drowning by Buckingham’s approaching armada. If this doesn’t have your eyes rolling in disbelief, I don’t know what will. Keep in mind, however, that this is a Saturday morning matinee movie and not to be taken too seriously. Bizarre and unrealistic things transpire in Saturday matinees.

Besides having excellent sword-fighting sequences in the film that were choreographed by sword master Roman Spacil with Brian Danner working with Logan Lerman on his fencing techniques, I felt the special effects were generally pretty good as well. I enjoyed the way old France was portrayed. The matte paintings and CGI effects made me feel as if I was in France during the 1600s with the bridges over the Seine River and the city of Paris spread out around the king’s palace and the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Even the airships looked somewhat realistic in certain scenes.
I certainly enjoyed the three actors as Porthos, Athos and Aramis. I thought they captured their roles perfectly. Christopher Waltz was ideal as Cardinal Richelieu though I kept expecting him to start speaking with a heavier German accent from his previous Oscar-winning role in Inglourious Bastards.

One of the main things I had a problem with was that a lot of the actors and actresses looked like children, though they were actually in their late teens to early twenties. D’Artagnan looked like a young teenager as did King Louis and his queen and Constance. Another thing is that Logan Lerman, who played D’Artagnan kept reminding me of a young Tim Matheson, who played in Animal House back during the seventies. I thought throughout the film that the Comte de Rochefort was being played by Michael Wincott, who played the same character in the 1993 version of The Three Musketeers. It was until the end credits ran that I realized Mads Mikkelson was the actor behind the leather eye patch.

Let’s not forget that near the beginning of the film, Aramis is giving D’Artagnan a citation because his horse was leaving a distasteful mess on the dirt street. I don’t remember much about French history, but I don’t think the King of France had his Musketeers handing out citations for horse manure in the streets of Paris. Maybe two hundred years later, but certainly not the early 1600s. If I’m wrong, please correct me on this historic fact.

Milla Jovovich’s portrayal of Milady de Winter was quite different from the character in the novel and in the previous films about The Three Musketeers. Nowhere does Milady fight a number of men with a sword, or jump off the top of buildings with a harness attached to her body, or slide under booby traps, or parade around in her sexy lingerie. Since it is Milla Jovovich, I accepted her stunts as part of the character’s personality and actually found myself looking forward to them, wondering what she would do next. Of course, surviving the ending turned out to be her greatest feat of all. It also didn’t hurt that Milla is still a beautiful lady in every sense of the word. I could definitely understand Athos being so much in love with her.

While I would probably rate this movie a 7 out of 10 as a delightful Saturday morning matinee film, you can’t go into the theater expecting to see a serious version of The Three Musketeers. This isn’t it. What this movie offers is two hours of pure fun and entertainment, fabulous stunts and special effects, brainless action, and little of actual substance. I liked it, while others haven’t. For me, however, Gene Kelly in the 1948 version of The Three Musketeers will be what I compare every other remake to, which in a way was a grown-up’s version of a Saturday morning matinee movie over sixty years ago.