Review of The Three Musketeers (2011) by Oxana — 23 Aug 2014

I loved this film. Need to see it again as soon as possible. (Didn't write a review right after seeing it, so need to re-watch and re-phrase what it says here now...).

I never finished Dumas' books. Back then, I got bored. I might try again, one day, but I have seen many of the previous Musketeer films and some of them I liked (Man In The Iron Mask), yet most I disliked. This one pretty much shoots past all the others into infinite glory of amazing!

The three famous musketeers - Athos (resonant-voiced Matthew Macfayden), Aramis (pretty, charming and wonderful Luke Evans) and Porthos (strong, loud, and endlessly amusing) - worked extremely well together. I feared for young D'Artagnan (Logan Lerman, whom I really liked in "Gamer"), but it would seem my worries were baseless; he wasn't overly annoying. Watching D'Artagnan fight, agile and fast, was one of the most entertaining things of all. Even the hair started to look good, which it did not in the promo pictures. The four of them had awesome chemistry, and when the going got tough and the plot gave way for action, it was a shame, really, to lose that perfectly tuned edge.

Then the bad guys... Milla Jovovich as Milady de Winter was disappointing, and a bit useless too, but she did her part to pull things together. Mads Mikkelsen as Rochefort did not get much to go on, but he did it pretty well. Orlando Bloom as Duke of Buckingham was... awesome in his own way. I would have liked to see more of him. However, I enjoyed every second of seeing Orlando on screen.

King Louis, his pretty queen, their problems, and Constance the maid-in-waiting, were pretty much pointless characters. The loyal servant of the musketeers, Planchet, pretty much fell into the same hole with them. They should have all been dropped to give Richelieu more room to plot and act.

The action was quite good, with slow-motion highlighting the best moments. The special effects were awesome, and even the war-machines - flying ships - were not that far off (well, I still find a problem or two with them, knowing how heavy the wood and weaponry must be, but let us skip that to enjoy the ride).

All in all one of the best movies of the year. Go to see this if you want to enjoy a bit of fun, and don't bring your magnifying glass to stare at every inaccuracy. If you let it go, you're bound to enjoy this - whether it stays true to the original material or not. We've seen Musketeers on big screen so many times I think it was a high time for them to spice it up a bit.