Released: 2001
Directed by: Peter Hyams
The next big The Three Musketeers film. The big draw on this one is that all of the fight choreography is done by Xiong Xin Xin of Hong Kong Action Theatre fame, (purported by the media to have worked on The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , but who (thank you owlman) actually hasn't).
D'Artagnan is played by Justin Chambers, who has all of the charisma and personality of a rock.
The Musketters are mostly forgettable folks you've never seen before, and are also, for the most part, at least 20 years older than Chambers, obviously. In fact, the majority of the actors seem to be French, except for the main lead parts, who are all American or English. And Chamber's and Mena Suvari's American accents right in the middle of everything are rather jarring.
The greatest crime suffered by the movie is that if falls victim to Brian Michael Bendis' observation that many modern media forms have conversation only to advance the plot...people don't talk in this movie to converse, they talk to make witty but empty reparte, or advance the plot. That's it.
The action was okay, but the filming of it was poor...many times the, camera is so close to the action in this film that you can't discern what is going on, or what you're supposed to be looking at...it's just a swirl of cloaks.
Never mind the poor shots of stuntmen where it's obviously not the actor in question due to hair color, or the bent stunt swords that rapidly describe a 90 degree angle due to having been banged on something.
It's not Black Mask, but it's close. Have fun, but don't expect anything near an accurate representation of the original book. It's an action flick.
Though I did appreciate the Rochefort wasn't the central bad guy...and Tim Roth, as always, makes a most excellent villain. See it just for him. *grin*
One somehow gets the impression that a number of different ideas and versions were thrown together here and they tried to make it the best movie they could. It was fun, but it just wasn't quality...