The Musketeer (2001)

Admirable film.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

To change the story that Alexander Dumas wrote somewhat is fine to me as long as it is not completely butchered. Only a silly dumb comedy is the exception that I can tolerate. But to throw in martial arts into the story leads to a butchered disaster.The only perk to this film is that the swashbuckling scenes are choreographed well plus the costumes and sets are nice. The acting is mediocre at best. Other than those things - the film is pretty much awful.I will admit that I was thinking this film was another film and when I got to watching it and reading comments on it I then recalled seeing this version of The Musketeers before... I then fast-forwarded the film to watch. It's pretty bad.4/10

A slightly lacking but generally sound updating of the classic swashbucklers of yesteryear, this action-packed offering proves to be a revitalised updating of the classic Alexandre Dumas tale, and as such would doubtlessly go hand-in-hand with the other recent French offering, THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO. The plot is involved but light at the same time, basically revolving around a series of fights, battles, and skirmishes, with some characters standing out from the crowd. The major musketeers are in the background now, however, to make way for fresh-faced newcomer D'Artagnan to cut, thrust and parry his way through the opposition until he reaches the treacherous Man in Black (a splendidly pantomime performance from Tim Roth).The supporting cast is generally left in the background, although there are dozens of familiar British faces in the crowd – keep an eye out for Bill Treacher (for UK readers, the late Arthur in EASTENDERS) as a weaselly peeping tom! Others like Nick Moran and Stephen Rea fill out showy roles, and Mena Suvari is around as the love interest, looking as lovely as ever but with even less to do than as per usual. One void in the film is Justin Chambers, who just doesn't cut it as the supposedly dashing hero D'Artagnan, and is hopelessly miscast. In some cases this film is pretty weird – the opening titles are the cheapest ever but stick with them, because the film isn't really that bad, I promise. In other areas the editing is poor and the dialogue, to be frank, sucks. But as I mentioned before, the action is agreeable, especially the opening and closing fight scenes (choreographed by a Hong Kong veteran no less). In particular the ladder fight at the close is fantastic stuff, ending things on a high.

The Musketeer (2001): Dir: Peter Hyams / Cast: Justin Chambers, Tim Roth, Mena Suvari, Catherine Deneuve, Stephen Rea: Embarrassing joke that is more content with the sound of clashing swords as they are pulled from their hilts. Title indicates oneness with Justin Chambers witnessing the death of his parents by a ruthless leader who still bares the scar the boy left. This pathetic charade has been used in eighty million other dumb Musketeer movies. It attempts to copy the wonderfully choreographed action of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but instead it presents the most embarrassing fight sequence to end any movie. This comes off a long list of Peter Hyams directed crap including End of Days and Sudden Death. Acting is horrible with Chambers as the hero and Tim Roth in one of his worst performance as the villain. Mena Suvari's role consists has her being caught naked in a bathtub. "Haven't you ever seen a naked woman before?" she asks as Chambers turns away respectively. Such idiotic hints of innuendo are juvenile in this poorly produced junk. Finally there is Catherine Deneuve who leaves us wondering what an actress of her class and stature doing in a piece of sh*t like this. There have been commercials for dog food that have been better produced than this. This garbage should be buried some place where it will never surface again. Score: 1 / 10

I'm a huge Dumas fan and watch every one of the adaptations but I missed this one originally. Just caught it on netflix and it's nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be. Yes, the lead is a little off and there isn't much chemistry between him and Mena Suvari who isn't at her best either. The wire based fight scenes look dated and there are a few scene pacing problems.But overall this was quite fun. There *is* chemistry between the Queen and D'artagnan thanks to Catherine Deneuve who exudes star quality in every scene she's in. There are some nice performances from most of the character actors, the original 3 musketeers are great, and the humor if not the plot is very in keeping with the book. I first thought this was a made for TV movie because of the credits at the beginning so I wasn't really expecting much and this definitely beat my expectations. The movie looks good and aside from a few characters most of them seem fairly real, the balance between schtick and too- serious was handled well.Overall, too many faults to be a classic but definitely enough class and fun to be very entertaining. Recommended for fans of period movies and the tongue in cheek dramedy.