The Three Musketeers

Year: 2011

Director: Paul W. S. Anderson

Cast: Logan Lerman, Matthew Macfadyen, Ray Stevenson, Luke Evans, Orlando Bloom, Milla Jovovich, Christoph Waltz

Before I begin my review……

                It’s insane how many times The Three Musketeers can be remade and the characters can be featured in different films, and they can still be a huge box office draw.

                I did a quick search and The Three Musketeers have been made into nearly 30 films in at least four different languages including English, Spanish and Danish. Disney have, of course, had a go at it, as has Japanese anime. The characters of Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D’Artagnan also appear in such films as 1998’s The Man In The Iron Mask. 

                The words The Three Musketeers are known to everyone, whether you have seen the films are not. They still capture the heart of adventure lovers from every generation.

                I guess The Three Musketeers is like many other remade adventure/ action movies these days. Film makers want to remake them as when they watch the original, they think to themselves “Imagine what we could do with thus film with all the film techniques we have available to us these days”.

                The 2011 version is definitely an example of “Hey! Look what we can do now!”

Review

                2011 seemed about time to make another The Three Musketeers, so why not? Just don’t expect too much different from other films of the same name as far as the story goes, visually except so much more!         

                Young D’Artagnan (Logan Lerman) is the son of a once Musketeer and travels from country France to Paris to become one himself. When he arrives, he finds that the three Musketeers, Athos (Matthew Macfadyen), Porthos (Ray Stevenson) and Aramis (Luke Evans) are not quite as popular and heroic as he once thought. However, when Lord Buckingham (Orlando Bloom) visits from England, he and Athos’ once love, Milady de Winter (Milla Jovovich) scheme to steal a diamond necklace from Queen Anne (Juno Temple). The Musketeers embark on an adventure to England to claim back what belongs to France.

                The Three Musketeers is one of those adventure films with plenty of corn cheese to it. It is very unrealistic with fights in air ships, fighting on top of English and French landmarks and blowing these landmarks to pieces. But hey, true story adventures were never this fun, right?

                Everything is very over the top, there is backing music to accompany every situation, even if it makes everything just seem all the more ridiculous. The graphics and special effects are very good and enhanced by 3D. However, some special effects visuals don’t look quite as realistic they could be.

                The musical score is very good and the sword fighting scenes are impressively choreographed. 

                Logan Lerman does well as the young D’Artagnan and Macfadyen, Stevenson and Evans are all very good as the Musketeers. Lerman, Macfadyen and Stevenson do very well with each of their characters and you know the true self of each of them. Evans lacks a tad in this area as you don’t really know where his character fits in personality wise with the others.

                Christoph Waltz is, as always, at home in the role of the villain. Not quite as evil as his previous roles of late, but still convincing as the Cardinal. Orlando Bloom impresses as Buckingham. Bloom isn’t known for playing the villainous roles, but he is completely convincing here and actually very entertaining to watch.

                Milla Jovovich is perhaps the most over-emphasised character. Absolutely everything about her character is completely overdone. Every facial expression and line she says just has a little too much in it.

                The Three Musketeers is this time around just as entertaining as the previous versions. Nowhere near the best version and not really very memorable, but entertaining enough.

6/10