Having clawed his way out of a shallow grave, D’Artagnan arrives in Paris, where he manages to offend Athos (Cassel), Porthos (Marmaï) and Aramis (Duris), booking back-to-back duels with all three of them. That gives this latest adaptation the heft and what-happens-next fascination of shows like “The Tudors” and “Versailles.” Indeed, it might have made a better miniseries. With four hours to work with, screenwriters Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière have more space in which to explore its many twists and intrigues. On more than one occasion, the plot of the novel (which runs nearly 800 pages in many editions) has proven dauntingly complex to reduce to feature length, which is one reason recent screen versions tend to feel inadequate. Milady may not be the story’s principal villain - that would be the duplicitous Cardinal Richelieu (Éric Ruf), who schemes to unseat the king but lurks largely in the shadows - but she’s by far the most compelling, and Green knows how to walk the razor-fine line between malice and camp. There’s no actor alive better suited to the seductive, sinister role than Green, who brings the dark spirit of “Penny Dreadful” and her recent Tim Burton collaborations to the part. One of the many strengths of Dumas’ source material is its delicious female antagonist (while the first part is dubbed after D’Artagnan, the second installment takes its name from Milady). The scene ends with the reveal of the movie’s real dream-casting coup: Eva Green as the cunning Milady de Winter, who leaves D’Artagnan for dead. The mud-covered opening action sequence takes place in the pouring rain - a virtuosic one-shot number where the choreography of the swordfighting and gun blasts is still only half as impressive as what the cameraman had to do to capture it all (even passing under a carriage at one point as D’Artagnan crawls through the muck). That’s the strange takeaway from “D’Artagnan”: Apparently, everything was dirty in France circa 1627, even the light, to the extent it looks as if Bourboulon instructed DP Nicolas Bolduc to study Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch,” while ordering the crew to spackle all the costumes and actors with a thin coat of grime. He’s spontaneous, unpredictable and full of energy, and director Bourboulon adopts a complementary shooting style: The widescreen camera nimbly observes, adapting to and dancing along with the action. François Civil, who plays ambitious young D’Artagnan, may be less familiar to foreign audiences, but he’s an obvious star - so much so that the film embraces the handsome actor’s scruffy goatee and wild, windblown hair, styling the character around Civil’s off-screen persona. Amusingly bored-looking, Louis Garrel prisses it up as King Louis XIII, while Vicky Krieps elegantly embodies his unfaithful wife Anne of Austria, whose indiscretions with the Duke of Buckingham (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) drive one of this movie’s biggest missions.Īs the titular trio - Athos, Porthos and Aramis, the top soldiers in a royal corps armed with guns but acclaimed for their swordsmanship - the film taps three thesps with no fewer than 18 César nominations among them: Cassel, Pio Marmaï and Romain Duris. Without overselling the movie - which certainly has its flaws - that would be a shame, as Bourboulon (whose 2021 “Eiffel” biopic proved he could operate on a large scale) has delivered the rare European co-production grand and exciting enough to rival the Hollywood franchise movies competing for local coin. In theory, the movie shouldn’t make a dime less than Vincent Cassel-starrer “Brotherhood of the Wolf” did back in 2001, but without an American studio behind it, or a smart marketing campaign to convey what a big deal it has been in France, “The Three Musketeers” might not even break even. 8, rather than on all the same screens that Ridley Scott’s no-less-bombastic “Napoleon” is now hogging. And so “D’Artagnan” must fend for itself in a tiny specialty release, playing in art-house theaters to foreign-film aficionados starting Dec.
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