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The 1993 effort starring Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen,
Chris O'Donnell, Oliver Platt and Tim Curry (the best Richelieu
ever) was very good, but lacked the anarchic mood of its predecessors.
However, Peter Hyam's effort The Musketeer plonks
everything on its head with a pretty gritty and earthy look
at the tale.
The light-heartedness of the '70s movies has been replaced
by an emphasis on fight scenes choreographed by leading Hong
Kong fight coordinator Xin-Xin Xiong and, surprisingly, the
blending of kung-fu style battles in 17th Century France work
very well indeed.
At first they take you a bit by surprise, as you half expect
Jackie Chan to pop out at any second, but they truly are eye-catching
events. The ladder fight stands out in this less-than-humble
opinion and the stagecoach scene involving leaping from horse,
to horse, to carriage, are just unbelievable.
But, action scenes aside, I reckon The Musketeer has
been given a pretty rough handling by critics and is better
than you would expect from their musings.
It is a more serious look at the adventures of D'Artagnan
(Justin Chambers) and the machiavellian Cardinal Richelieu
(Stephen Rea) is certainly not the centre of hate that the
character was in previous movies. Rea plays him with a subdued
ambition rather than gleeful evil (a la Tim Curry) and the
No.1 bad guy is ace swordsman and evil-doer Febre (Tim Roth).
And yet Roth seems to underplay his role as well - if you
compare it with his nasty in Rob Roy.
The video transfer is pretty damn good, with some superb
photography being nicely reproduced on the DVD.
The colours are rich and rustically robust, although in the
regular night scenes the blacks are suspect. Sometimes the
images get a bit soft, but overall nothing to stop your enjoyment
of the film.
The sound is both 2.0 and 5.1 and you'd be silly not to go
for the 5.1. The sound is good, but the use of the surround
speakers may irritate some viewers as they may find them too
overpowering.
The Musketeer seems to offer a more realistic look
at the legendary tale and director Hyam's mixing of East and
West gives this an interesting flavour.
Conclusion: Movie 80%, Extras 45%
Continued:
DVD details at a glance >
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