MyRating: YY1/2Director: Paul W.S. Anderson
Cast: Logan Lerman, Matthew Macfayden, Ray Stevenson, Luke Evans, Milla Jovovich, Christoph Waltz, Orlando Bloom, Gabriella Wilde, Freddie Fox, Juno Temple, Mads Mikkelsen, James Corden
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for sequences of adventure action violence
One of Alexander Dumas' most notable masterpieces and legacies (besides The Count of Monte Cristo), The Three Musketeers is back. And now, in the hand of Paul W.S. Anderson (the same director who brought us Mortal Kombat, AVP: Alien vs. Predator, Death Race and Resident Evil), this famous and classic swashbucking tale has turned into the 21st century 'Victorian steampunk' adventure with gigantic flying ships, lots of gun powder explosions and least amount of logic.
The young D'Artagnan (Logan Lerman) goes to Paris with the dream of becoming a Musketeer. Hot headed and reckless, he quickly gets himself into an animosity with Cardinal Richelieu's (Christoph Waltz) guards. At almost the same time, he also arrogantly challenges the three ex-Musketeers, Athos (Matthew Macfayden), Porthos (Ray Stevenson) and Aramis (Luke Evans) into a duel. But as they find out that they are actually in the same boat, as the Three Musketeers also hate Richelieu and his guards for their evil doings (The Cardinal is the mastermind behind the French monarch, who controlls the young and inexperience King Louis XIII (Freddie Fox) like a puppet for his own interests), and as the Three Musketeers are impressed with D'Artagnan's swords skills and determination, they finally become friends. Together, they have to stop the evil grand plan of Richelieu to cause a war between France and England, to fight Captain Rochefort (Mads Mikkelsen), Richelieu's one-eyed leader guard and a fine swordsman, to defeat the treacherous double agent Milady the Winter (Milla Jovovich), and to stop the Duke of Buckingham from England (Orlando Bloom) to attack France.
Paul Anderson surely didn't hesitate to make his movie to look big and spectacular with many supposed to be 'big spectacular' scenes, but the results ended up making the movie looked dumb instead, with many 'big dumb' scenes, and these were what hurt the movie. When I saw Milla Jovovich running and dodging hundreds (or thousands, maybe millions) of deadly hidden weapons shooting all around in the booby trap chamber in the beginning of the movie, I said to myself, "Eww, that was unbelievable stupid!" That was a very bad start and I believed things might get worse only.
But after a very clumsy beginning, I have to say that I somehow started to enjoy the movie when it told the story of D'Artagnan getting into troubles in Paris, meeting with the Three Musketeers and defeating the 40-something royal guards (not 400 guards, as the kingdom had an off day that day). Some of the humors were working just fine. The actings from the cast were not bad actually. Logan Lerman and the Three Musketeers were not outstanding, but they were not bad at all in playing their characters and giving us some fun time. And we have Christoph Waltz who seemed to play his stereotype villain role, but always a fun to watch. King Louis XIII character, played by Freddie Fox, has many screen times in this movie, and like it or not, his silly character (who worries more on what color of suits he should matchingly wear today than on how to rule his kingdom) was kind of a smile-teaser. The movie also has Milla Jovovich, who seemed to get some of her special action scenes here because of her hubby director Anderson, but she is always a one-tough chick. And finally we got Orlando Bloom. I am not sure whether now the girls are still 'screamin and yellin' everytime they hear his name, but he is who he is, never really impressed of him, but again, he was not bad here.
I think the setting and the costumes were good, especially the colorful Victorian costumes. And the cinematography was beautiful, as well as the airships. I didn't watch this movie in 3D, but I could imagine some pretty cool stuffs offered if I watched it in 3D. This movie never stopped being silly though. It was kind of a joke for me when watching an airship shooting brutally towards a building with many enemies and one of our heroes inside, hitting the enemies all around, while our hero managed to run pass through the bullets without any scratch. Or when two airships bombarded each other with heavy weaponry, both got bombed so badly that I was afraid I would fall, but still managed to fly and didn't sink. Or wait until you see them sank on top of a high building. Ridiculously impressive! Over the top and spectacularly dumb.Don't take it too seriously when watching this movie, even though the filmmakers did take it serious as they confidently give an open ending that will lead to a sequel... if the sequel were ever being made. (MJ)
MYMOVIE CRITIC - REVIEWING MOVIES FROM THE AUDIENCE'S STANDPOINT
