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The Musketeer

The Musketeer

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $13.48
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Insulting, Monsieur!
Review: Born and raised in France I will tell you this movie is a supreme insult to Mr. Alexandre Dumas! The original masterpiece has been hacked to bits by a Hollywood mob hooked on fluff and with no regards whatsoever for substance; the characters are shallow, the acting without flavor and the the whole movie altogether pointless. The fighting scenes would have been enjoyable had I not been bored to tears by the senseless rubbish stuffed in between them.
I give it one star for the mere reason the Amazon does not offer the possibility of a lower grade. Save your money, buy the book instead!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: All For One.... And One Too Many
Review: Been there, done that.

"The Musketeer" follows the same, basic story that all of its predecessors have already done. Sadly, most better them are better than this one.

But there are two saving graces for this movie. First is Justin Chambers, who stars as D'Artagnan. There is a freshness that Mr. Chambers brings to the movie, which is more obvious when compared to the staleness that is the rest of the movie. The second saving grace is the choreography of the fight scenes. Fight choreographer Xiong Xin Xin, of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" fame, brings a fluidic movement to D'Artagnan's fight scenes.

Feel free to rent this movie once. The fight scenes and Justin Chambers will make it worth it. But don't add it to your collection until you've seen it first, because chances are that this movie would only end up serving as a doorstop.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Quite possible the worst movie of all times. 0 stars
Review: This movie [stinks]. The story is nothing like the original, the acting is horrific, the swordfighting utterly ridiculous.
The scene that sums it all up is when the guards won't chase after a carriage going about 1 mph and everyone escapes.
I have no idea how on earth anyone could make a movie so terrible. Extremely torturous to watch. Do not buy it, do not rent it. In fact, just read the book, which is awesome.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: All for one, one for all? I don't think so...
Review: Ewwww! Had to go soak my head in the sink after this one. The Musketeer is one of the most feeble films I've had the displeasure to see in a long time (and I like a lot of films that are generally deemed "stinkpots." This one was low even for my deplorable taste.) Despite what is going to be a nasty review ahead, you might love this film anyway if you adore all swashbucklers and swordfighting films. So keep this in mind as you read further.

The Musketeer is an adaptation of Dumas' Three Musketeers. I'm not rating this film badly because this subject has been filmed excessively --I love retold classics and we can always use a good swashbuckler. I don't even mind that this is "Musketeer Lite" (with only 1 Calorie, I mean, Musketeer instead of the three or four we usually are served up. Your favorites, Pothos, Aramis and Athos are present, but are usually drunk or being disaffected during most of the film.)

What makes me want to demand satisfaction from the producers of this travesty is the miserable script, stupid direction, sloppy editing and shoddy acting. While Stephen Rea (Cardinal Richelieu) and his minion-from-Hell Febre (Tim Roth) were admirable villains, our hero D'Artagnan (Justin Chambers) was pathetic. Obviously, the casting director wanted Johnny Depp, who wisely steered clear of the script or was hiding behind a velvet curtain when this role was being passed out. Justin Chambers looks like he's making a real effort to be a Depp copy, but his lack of acting ability and slurred diction proved that cloning is years away from being able to be successfully implemented.

Catherine Deneuve is nervous but adequate as the French queen (however, in a number of scenes she is visibly looking at the director with a Gallic twist to her eyebrows and a French word nearly on her lips beginning with "m." ) The exceptionally pretty Mena Suvari is a nice touch as the ingénue Francesca. She gets most of what would have been the good lines. Too bad her delivery was about as punchy as a tax court case summation.

Even worse were the special effects from Hong Kong's action-meister Xin Xin Xiong (rhymes with "wrong".) This looked like a bad copy of "Crouching Tiger" with "stuntman-on-a-string" action in the sword fights and what could have been good but was merely stupid and unrealistic dancing on the ceiling. BUT, if you love special effects, lots of swordplay and fighting, you might love this film just for these scenes alone. The good news is that on the DVD, you can fast-forward to these scenes, indulge your bloodlust and skip the rest of the gar-BAHZH.. I love swordfighting but not enough to love this film.

The setting was supposedly in Paris and other parts of France, but done mostly in Luxembourg. This added to the unconvincing effect, though the donjons, palaces and scenery were lovely European postcards. It just wasn't France, except for some spots filmed in Toulouse. Which rhymes with "you lose."

All for one and one for all? Not a chance. This film is definitely "All for NONE."

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Bad movie not redeemed by inventive fight scenes
Review: By any standard, this is a very strange movie. The fight scenes are quite remarkable, but because they seem more appropriate in THE MATRIX or CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON or, even, SHREK, they seem bizarrely out of place in this film. They also make the rest of the film look all that much worse than it would have otherwise. It is worth noting that the fight scenes were the product of Xin Xin Xiong, whose background is in Asian martial arts films.

Numerous reviewers have noted the absurdity of the script, especially in that it changes the story of Alexandre Dumas. To tell the truth, the original story isn't so terribly special that some emendation is out of order. The trouble is that the changes that are introduced do not produce a good story. So, it is quite true that one of the great faults of the film is a very bad script.

A more serious problem is the acting, especially in several of the key roles. Based on his wooden, monotone performance in this film (an amazing achievement considering all the action in this one), Justin Chambers would have to compete for the title of the world's worst actor. The only other thing I have seen him in was THE WEDDING PLANNER, in which he was the most irritating element as Jennifer Lopez's would-be Italian fiance. He was bad in that, but he is far, far worse in this film. Tim Roth is a talented guy, but has anyone noticed how many bad films he is in? And how many ham roles he gets? Basically, his role in this film is essentially a rehash of his Oscar-nominated role in ROB ROY. Stephen Rea is more or less wasted as Cardinal Richelieu. The portrayal of Richelieu in films has always perplexed me. He is almost universally portrayed as a villain, and yet he is easily one of the most important figures in French political history, providing important national leadership at a time of crisis in the monarchy. Certainly he was not any more ruthless than many other strong national leaders in the seventeenth century. Mena Suvari is not cut out for costume pictures, and while she seems perfectly in her element in AMERICAN BEAUTY and the AMERICAN PIE films, she just doesn't belong here.

The film did look good, and whoever was in chart of art direction did a bang up job. But good looking sets and great fighting sequences cannot in themselves make a good picture. Not a very successful film at all.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Wow, this movie was a sad attempt of entertainment
Review: Allright. I fell asleep. I wasn't even tired and I fell asleep. I never fall asleep. That's sad.

If I could give this 0 stars I would have. The movie sounds interesting, but it makes little sense and has an ending that could of been guessed five minutes into the movie.

Don't watch it. Please. Unless you really need some sleep.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Spot the Squid
Review: The most entertaining part of this movie is watching a small luminous squid skitter across the screen about 30 minutes in.

The second most entertaining part is watching with disbelief as a band of guards give up chasing a coach going five miles per hour the minute it passes through a set of gates.

The script is about as good as something a five year old kid could come up with on a bad day.

The actors a) should have known better; b) were really desperarte; or c) thought it was a comedy and everything would work out all right in the end.

If you can sit through this movie from beginning to end you can sit through anything.

This goes into my top ten movies of all time with no redeeming features. This should have gone straight to video - straight into the marked-down basket - you can keep the box for a spare but throw away the disc or tape over the tape.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: What a shame
Review: Wow, it is really really bad movie. I would rate it a B-Hong-Kong
martial arts movie (not even just B-movie). I wonder who came up with this ``wonderful'' idea to introduce Chinese fighting into this classical story. Complete failure. Jerking plot (and just motion, even in fighting sequence). Clothing was Ok and Mena Suvari acted well. Actually, many actors were potentially good, BUT the director and ``fighting horeographer'' are amazingly not good.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Some good ideas -- they just don't all belong in one movie
Review: On the surface, "The Musketeer" has a good central idea: Take Dumas' classic swashbuckling tale and add a touch of modern Hong Kong wire work to the action. Described like that, it's easy to see what was intended: Soaring, even transcendant action, battles that are as much dance as they are combat, and a shot in the arm to a nearly dead genre.

It didn't quite turn out that way.

It has been said that too many cooks can spoil the soup, and here, we see too many ideas doing the same. "The Musketeer" rolls together too-little wire work, a grubbily accurate recreation of the period (which means the film is so dark that you miss much of the action), a special focus on D'Artagnan over the rest of the Musketeers, a stellar cast (Tim Roth as Fabre is better than the rest of the film combined) and a script that was clearly intended to ignore almost all of the above assets, putting the focus on the poorly lit and poorly shot action. (Seriously, did anyone immediately understand what happened to Fabre at the end?) Toss in a lead played by an underwear model who can't pronounce his character's name, and you've got big trouble right here in Paris city.

Done well, audiences can forgive much of the silliness of swashbuckling films (they did so as recently as the Antonio Bandaras "Mask of Zorro"), but in a film like "The Musketeer" scenes of soldiers repelling down a tower to get at D'Artagnan instead of, I don't know, just CUTTING THE ROPES become maddening instead.

A film that desperately wants to be "The Matrix" instead comes off as yet another tired film attempting to cash in on the craze for Hong Kong-style action it helped create.

Not recommended for fans of the original work or Hong Kong-style action. A rental suggestion for diehard fans of swashbuckling stories.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Insult to Dumas and all fans of the genre
Review: Is it possible to give **minus** five stars? I feel ashamed at being forced by Amazon.com to offer this debacle even 1 star.

This film, from its very beginnings, had me saying aloud what an incredible mistake it was to waste good money on buying it.

And an even greater insult was to squander the not inconsiderable talents of Tim Roth and Stephen Rea. I could only shake my head in disbelief as scene after horrid scene unfolded.

It felt like some of the worst fan fiction I've ever read. And the finale with the ladders? Obviously the stunt coordinator has spent his entire life living in a box with no air holes, and nothing but Jackie Chan movies to help lighten his otherwise empty hours.

Ten thumbs down, way down.


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