Review of The Four Musketeers (1974) by Stuart K — 07 Feb 2013

The original plan was to have had Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers (1973) as a huge 4 hour epic, but producer Alexander Salkind thought they'd make more money if they split the film into two.

A good idea, but he didn't tell the cast, who sued him and won. It's a slower film than the first one, but and it was probably a good idea to split it, as the attention span wouldn't have coped with this.

With d'Artagnan (Michael York) now a fully ordained Musketeer along with Athos (Oliver Reed), Porthos (Frank Finlay), and Aramis (Richard Chamberlain), France can rejoice that the Musketeers prevented a royal embarrassment.

However, there's religious wars going on between the Catholics and Protestants, so Cardinal Richelieu (Charlton Heston) orders Count de Rochefort (Christopher Lee) to kidnap Constance Bonacieux (Raquel Welch), who is d'Artagnan's love and the go-between of Queen Anne (Geraldine Chaplin), plus Milady de Winter (Faye Dunaway) plans an elaborate revenge on the Musketeers using d'Artagnan as a pawn in her game.

It's an entertaining conclusion to the two films, this one is more action orientated, but there's enough of Lester's trademark humour to keep it going. Lester would reunite with screenwriter George MacDonald Fraser for more heroics with Royal Flash (1975).