The Musketeer

REVIEW
The swashbuckling tales of Alexandre Dumas' Three Musketeers are so inherently exciting that it would probably take a genius to make them seem boring and trivial. Alas, director Hyams and screenwriter Gene Quintano have accomplished just that -- we'll refrain, however, from calling them geniuses just yet. A monotone Chambers is D'Artagnan, the famous fourth musketeer, who here sets out to avenge the murder of his parents. He tangles with a villainous commander (played with no restraint by Roth) and Cardinal Richelieu (Rea almost sleepwalking), while saving the queen and, oh yeah, re-energizing the guard. He should have re-energized the script. Hyams' direction is tedious, what you can see of it, anyway, since the film is so bloody dark. The raison d'être for this remake is the choreography by martial arts master Xin-Xin Xiong, but even that fails to excite. The Musketeer falls flat with un grand thud.