The Musketeer (DVD) > Reviews > One For All And All For Nothing

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Advantages:	Hilarious, funniest film of the year .
Disadvantages:	It's not a comedy .

Recommend to potential buyers:

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Full review

Only rich people can afford to walk out of movies. It was during The Musketeer that I realised how true this is and how, I wished I hadn’t handed over the £4.20 when I pretended I was 17 so I could get in for cheap. How excited Pete (my movie buddy) and I and been when we saw the poster for The Musketeer now seemed like a distant memory as we patiently waited for what was probably the worst film I have ever seen to finish. The poster had been awash with colour and action and had enticed us with the promise of Mena Suvari (from American Pie) and was, I now realise, a bare faced lie. There was not one moment in which I actually enjoyed any aspect of the film and I was only laughing so much because it was so appalling.

The plot was perhaps the most pathetic failure the film had to offer because it was based on such a brilliant and original idea. The classic by Alexandre Dumas has been much interpreted with many different films and plays, but never before has it been so abused. The story of young D’Artagnan, his travels to Paris to become a Musketeer and his subsequent adventures has even been made into a rather cool cartoon called Albert The Fifth Musketeer which was actually ten times better than the limp overlong turkey fest I had to endure. Its not even as though we need another adaption with The Three Musketeers and The Man In The Iron Mask still well within recent memory. It is a further crime that with so many other great movies of the swash buckling type, Hollywood can still manage to regurgitate a film entirely stolen from other films that is still so disgustingly bad.

The pilfered plot began with a young D’Artagnan living with his parents in wholesome happy bliss, when suddenly Da Da DAA!! The evil Febre arrives dressed all in black and slaughters them. The injured yet plucky boy manages to scar the baddie partly for revenge and so that in later years he’ll still be recognisable. The credits then roll and the film flashes forward 14 years when D’Artagnan is cared for by Planchet, a family friend who took him in. Planchet, who we saw rescuing D’Artagnan before the flash forward is interestingly still wearing the same clothes he was in 14 years ago. It is stupid little things like lack of attention to detail that get this film off to a bad start and then continue throughout. D’Artagnan then travels to Paris to become one of the Kings Musketeers, the elite force to which his father belonged. He arrives to find the Musketeers blamed for alleged attacks on foreign envoys and disbanded he then makes friends with three familiar Musketeers Porthos, Athos and Aramis. He also befriends the attractive Francesca who we realise is the love interest when she enters in slow motion and through a sun beam, lighting her up in dazzling colour. Sadly the film remains painfully obvious as the Director has never heard of the word Stereotype. The story then descends into some mumbled rubbish about an evil Cardinal trying to start a war and D’Artagnan goes after Febre, the henchman who killed his parents. Don’t worry I haven’t given anything away and I doubt you will even make it this far into the film as people were walking out when I saw it.

The Cast:
D’Artagnan- Justin Chambers
Francseca- Mena Suvari
Febre- Tim Roth
Cardinal Richelieu- Stephen Rea
Aramis- Nick Moran
Porthos- Steven Spiers
Athos- Jan Gregor Kemp
King Louis- Daniel Mesguich
Queen Anne- Catherine Deneuve
Planchet- Jean Pierre Castaldi
Bonacieux- Bill Treacher
Rochefort- David Schofield
Lord Buckingham- Jeremy Clyde

Director- Peter Hyams

It was a shame that whoever paid for this to be made didn’t bother to watch their Directors past efforts, such as Jean Claude Van Damme misfires like Sudden Death and Timecop. Most of the actors were perfectly competent, but then why the hell did they agree to be in this? Tim Roth turns in a shameless performance as the villain, and blows everyone off the screen, chews the scenery and escapes with the money. Most puzzling of all is Mena Suvari attempting to shed her American Beauty/ American Pie image with a bafflingly lazy portrayal of Francesca and an accent that beggars belief. The accents are another telling sign of the sloppy Direction with most of them American some of them English, a few French and some that could be one or all of the above. Even if the script had been good, which it wasn’t, the dialogue would still have been ludicrous because of such a wide range of voices from the very English Roth to the sweet and lilting American Suvari. Most of the performances were terrible, particularly D’Artagnan who looked as though he had just wandered in off an Aussie Soap and spent the whole time looking dreamily at Suvari whilst glaring at everyone else.

The Script was one of the worst ever written due to a writer who had lifted all the dialogue out of the big book of Cliches and stilted phrases. It was embarrassing at first and after that, hilarious as the actors stood woodenly about swapping cheesy sentiments and vainly trying to claw back some dignity. I was the first person in the cinema to stop pretending to enjoy the film and to start laughing, and soon everyone was joining in and shouting out jokes that were more entertaining the film. Particularly funny was D’Artagnan’s conversation to his horse as it collapsed which was spoken so seriously that people were rolling in the aisles. It quickly became an unintended comedy and essential if you’re like me and love bad films that are often more funny than most films that are meant to be funny. It was so contrived and risible that at times I wondered whether it was meant to be this bad, but sadly I realised that this was actually the best they could come up with. Tim Roth had a few good lines, but when I say a few I mean exactly that. It was totally devoid of any kind of purpose and direction and I only understood it because I knew the rough story line.

The Direction would have been good if the director had had the slightest clue about what he was doing and if he actually knew what a camera was. The Direction was lazy and uninteresting at its best, and when the camera was held the right way round all we got was boring unimaginative shots that reduced any half decent scenes into a confusing blur. The indoor shots where too dark and the outdoor shots were all done up close so that we had no sense of scale or size. Battle scenes were the only thing this film had going for it so it’s a shame they got screwed up as well, they were filmed so fast and with no indication as to what we were meant to be looking at. For most of it, it was as though they simply tied the camera to a rope and left it dangling from a tree and in many of the fights it is impossible to tell who’s fighting who, and who wins.

The one potential redeeming feature was the Chinese stunt co-ordinator, who at least had some idea about film making. Unfortunately the appalling cinematography ruined all his stunt work and only made it seem contrived and unnecessary. The end finale is possibly the best thought out and breathtaking stunt ever imagined but it simply didn’t make sense or fit in the film, being more suited to a frenzied Hong Kong Shoot Em Up which is obviously where it came from. Overall the film was hilarious for all the wrong reasons. It wanted to be awe inspiring and poignant but came across as self important and pompous. I enjoyed it only because it was awful in every single way imaginable, and I hope it does well at the next Raspberry Awards. Make sure you avoid this like a Robert De Niro comedy and pretend to ignore the kids when they want to see it. You can thank me later.

Willgould.