Product: The Musketeer (2001)
Rating: 1.0
Yeah, it's pretty bad.
A lamentable adaptation of the classic "Three Musketeers" saga. This film looks stylish, but is appallingly dreadful in its cliche-ridden script and clumsy execution... To begin with, trash all hope of seeing Alexandre Dumas's grand story in a millennial revamp -- the script takes such liberties with the original material that we should consider ourselves lucky they remembered to call the hero D'Artagnan. The big deal with this film is supposed to be the Hong Kong-style "wire works" action scenes, which were choregraphed by Xin-Xin Xiong, of "Crouching Tiger" fame... Well, there is no dragon hidden in these sequences -- they are both kinetically flat and a distracting anachronism: I don't think the French palace guard ran up the side of buildings, ninja style... so why pretend they did? This movie is full of failed attempts at wackiness and bonhomie... Pity poor Stephen Rea and Tim Roth who, as the bad guys, had to attempt to carry this film all on their own. Zzzzzzzzzz.