Review of The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) by Will J — 10 Feb 2013

A little underwhelming, this movie had so much potential and only used half of it. The rest is muddled, unclear, and a waste of what could have been fantastic. Chances such as Paris, that looked small and under explored or the riding scenes that were too often and not in the right places.

Another thing this movie lacked was proper emotional impact such as Raoul's death. There were good things such as Jeremy Iron's and Gabriel Byrne's performances or the final act of the movie.

So there is quality in here, it's just diluted with things such as immaturity in areas or poor dialogue. One thing that annoyed me in particular was that there were real fountains, not old fashioned, but practically sprinklers.

I'm normally not one to pick a movie apart just because it did one tiny thing out of historical context, but this was distracting and felt lazy. If there's nothing else to do, watch this movie, but don't carve out a large movie night to see this movie.