The Musketeer

A young French boy sees his parents killed before his eyes by Tim Roth, oops…I mean, an evil man. He vows revenge on that man and is taught the ways of the Musketeer by some old dude who used to be one himself? Anyway, fourteen years go by and…arrgh, well, you know the rest…swish-swish-zzzzzzz!

This is a pretty bad movie. Let’s see, where should I start? Okay, first of all, the story is just plain boring. It’s not original, is entirely predictable and lacks energy. Okay, what’s next? Acting, you say. Hmmmm, well, the main actor, Justin Chambers, is basically an uncharismatic version of Chris O’Donnell but with less range (think about that!), and Mena Suvari, is just plain off. Not as bad as Thora Birch was in DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, but entirely miscast, with bad deliveries, awful sequences and a piss-poor accent that comes and goes. Now I’m not sure if this was Ms. Suvari’s fault or the director’s, but I’ve definitely seen her at a much higher level than in this film. The only semi-saving grace actor-wise is Tim Roth as the irrepressible “bad guy”, but once again, it’s not something that we haven’t seen before…a thousand times…by the same guy!! Tim, please…for the love of God, beg your agent to ask the marketplace for some modern day “American roles” for you as a “nice guy” in a romantic comedy or something. Stretch, dude…stretch!! We all know that you can do much better than this gunk. Alright, what else was bad in this film? Oh yeah, the score! Yikes, how’s about taking it down a few notches there, fellas? This thing blares in your ear whenever it feels the need to accentuate a certain scene, but actually does little more than annoy. I think it’s important for the man behind the music to recognize that this film isn’t a “real epic” by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a fluffy rehashed cake-walk created by some “shrewd” studio heads who decided to take advantage of the whole “kung-fu” phenomenon in films, and test it out on an old classic. Dudes…you failed all around! (keep reading)

The editing is also pretty shoddy in this movie, the dialogue banal and stilted and the plot problems…plentiful! (why does the guy on top of the horse carriage just stand there when his opponent takes forever scampering his way back to the top? why don’t they just cut the mouseketeer’s rope at the top of the tower, instead of jumping down on their own chords and fighting him while hanging? why doesn’t anybody look a day older, when the sequence says “14 years later”? (at least…change your shirt, man!) Keep in mind that I have never strayed away from championing certain movies that are created simply for the sake of a “fun time”, but this flick just didn’t cut it for me. It was boring for stretches, the acting was atrocious at times (the “romantic” scene between Suvari and Chambers next to the lake reminded me of plays in high school which made you cringe), there was little reason to care for anyone and since when were the Musketeers fat?

I will give the movie this much, and that is that its main reason for being (its “raison-d’etre”, as the French would say), its fight sequences, do come through despite the lack of their numbers in the film. I was hoping that the movie would be packed with cool stuntwork as promoted in its trailer, but what you see there, are essentially the snippets from the two major (and cool) swashbuckling sequences from the film. The first comes right at the beginning of the movie, while the other essentially finishes the film off, hanging from the tower and juggling off ladders. The ladder sequence itself is a definite keeper but unfortunately the rest of the movie is just regurgitated crap. And can anyone please tell me how Catherine Deneuve got her name placed at the top of this film’s credits? Hullo? The film is called THE MUSKETEER and stars a dude name Justin Chambers. Deneuve is barely in this movie! Ugh, just another small thing that annoyed me about this trash.

Now say it together, gang: “All for one, and one for all…we vow to stay away from it all!!” Thank me later.

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian