Now, can somebody remind me how this goes again... you pay money and they let you sit in a dark room for a couple of hours...It's been a while! In fact we missed the whole of October!
But, on with the movie.
The Three Musketeers!
As the title of the post suggests, this is not your mother's Three Musketeers. This isn't Charlie Sheen and Chris O'Donnell... this isn't Oliver Reed and Michael York... and this certainly isn't Gene Kelly!
This is Paul W.S. Anderson's Three Musketeers... this is Mission Impossible meets Indiana Jones meets Lara Croft.
It's not in the least little bit historically accurate, it plays fast and loose with not only the original Musketeers story but it reinvents history as it goes along.
The whole thing is as camp as camp can be, but there's great action, amazing costumes, gorgeous men, Milla Jovovich doing what Milla Jovovich does best, the core of the Three Musketeers story survives... oh, and it has airships. Yeah, you heard me... airships.
And I loved it.
It kept everything fresh, and even though they played around with character backstory and relationships, it was actually surprisingly faithful in parts, and those that weren't actually didn't feel out of place.
It's also clear that Orlando Bloom was paying close attention to Johnny Depp throughout the first three Pirates movies... there's more than a touch of Jack Sparrow's scenery chewing in Bloom's performance as Buckingham. He's wonderfully evil and camp though, and it'll be nice to see him take on more of these villainous type roles rather than the hero I think.
Speaking of the hero... Percy Jackson star Logan Lerman takes on the role of D'Artagnan... all floppy hair and youthful cockiness... but it was nice to see someone so young taking on the role... even Chris O'Donnell felt a little old at 23.
And Lerman pretty much kicks ass all up and down the movie.
It's got a great cast actually... other than Bloom and Jovovich, there's Mads Mikkelsen and Christoph Waltz making the most of the villains... Matthew Macfadyen, Luke Evans and Ray Stevenson as the titular Musketeers... a fun comic turn by James Corden as their servant... and beautifully awkward performances by Freddie Fox and Juno Temple as the King and Queen.
It's campy, it's historically irresponsible, it's full of explosions and modern action movie staples, it's so very over the top... but I had a thoroughly good time with it... quite probably because I was expecting it to be completely over the top.
But I loved it just the same.
yani's rating: 4 rooftop swordfights out of 5
1 comment:
Oh wow! I was excited to Milla Jovohich in this but when it was destroyed by the critics, I thought it would be best to give it a miss.
But reading this review, well. I think I better go check it out!
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