As handsome as its star, François Civil, The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan was shot back-to-back with its bookend companion, The Three Musketeers: Milady, a pair of old-school spirited adventures full of flashing eyes and flashing blades.
I read somewhere that it’s quite tonally different from other Musketeer movies. It didn’t seem so to me. I only recently watched its century-old predecessor, 1921’s The Three Musketeers, starring Douglas Fairbanks, and that is pretty much identical to this in storyline and feel.
But then all Musketeer movies tell the same story – Alexandre Dumas’s original tale must be one of the least messed about with in moviedom. D’Artagnan, the cocksure whelp from Gascony, arrives in Paris and seemingly within minutes has accidentally challenged legendary musketeers Athos, Portos and Aramis to a duel, separately, unaware of who they are. This lightning and exciting intro out of the way, to the matter at hand and a dastardly plot cooked up between Cardinal Richelieu and Milady to… something… something… something. In this case, and sticking to Dumas’s story pretty much to the letter, it’s to discredit the queen by suggesting she’s trysting with the Duke of Buckingham and thus accelerate France into war with England.
There is less roistering than you got in the Gene Kelly 1948 version, or the Dick Lester films from the 1970s, or the Bratpack one from the 1990s – does anyone really remember any of the many others? The Logan Lerman/Matthew Macfadyen one from 2011 maybe.
Less roistering and fewer plumed hats, but in essence this is an old-school romp with hissable villains, obvious heroes and the fair hand of a pretty lady going to the gent with the most gallantry, finest swordplay or most splendid facial hair.
It looks fantastic. Director Martin Bourboulon (whose father, interestingly, produced Bertrand Tavernier’s 1994 Revenge of the Musketeers, which starred Sophie Marceau as D’Artagnan’s avenging daughter) has opted to shoot as little of it as possible in the studio. His locations are exquisite – the Louvre Palace, the chateaux at Fontainebleau, Saint-Germain-en-Lay, Fort-la-Latte and Chantilly, the old town of Troyes – France is full of 17th-century buildings in fine shape, so why not use them?
The casting is similarly exquisite. Civil was Bourboulon’s first choice for D’Artagnan and is perfect in the role. The other musketeers – Vincent Cassel, Romain Duris and Pio Marmaï – all fit the bill, though Marmaï is underused to the point almost of being sidelined, though to be fair none of the musketeers get much of a smell in this movie. It’s D’Artagnan in the title and so that’s the way, or so it seems, that it’s going to be.
Eva Green as Milady. Yes! Wicked. Beautiful. Dangerous. Milady wears a gigantic raked black hat and smokes a black pipe. Enough said. Louis Garrel as King Louis XIII is also a good choice, Garrel playing the king as a man not entirely convinced of his divine right to rule. Éric Ruf’s Cardinal Richelieu, like Marmaï, doesn’t get much to do either, nor Jacob Fortune-Lloyd as the Duke of Buckingham. Vicky Krieps as the king’s wife also seems to be excessive casting for what’s a pretty minor role, pivotal though the queen turns out to be to the plot. Lyna Khoudri smoulders away as Constance, the queen’s right-hand-woman and object of D’Artagnan’s affections.
With all this going in its favour, it’s slightly gutting to report that it’s a pretty inert affair. There are sword fights and wild dashes across sea and heathland, a horse chase along a clifftop in England at one point, but the story is too familiar to still contain any surprises, and Bourboulon’s attempts to shift its tone from historical adventure to detective procedural to thriller are not entirely successful and suggest he knows there’s a dramatic deficit that needs addressing.
Where’s Athos, Porthos and Aramis when you need them, I kept thinking. Oh well, maybe Eva Green can ride to the rescue in December in part 2: Milady.
The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
I am an Amazon affiliate
© Steve Morrissey 2024
