Friday, September 7, 2001

Movie review
The Musketeer
By Tim Dragga

Alexandre Dumas’ classic tale is transformed into fighting spectacle. There are, of course, many different styles of directing a film. They range from Oliver Stone’s epic, highly intricate cut sequences, montages and painstaking editing, to Ang Lee’s very simple and natural direction. In an Oliver Stone film, one marvels at the direction. In an Ang Lee film, one forgets there is even a director at all. It was Ang Lee’s elegant direction of last year’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” that allowed the brilliance of the fight choreography to show through.

It is exactly this style of direction that serves “The Musketeer” so well. Director Peter Hyams (of “End of Days”) knows exactly when to back off and not ruin the action by inserting a bunch of flashy jump cuts and gyrating camera work that’s only going to completely confuse what’s going on. The fight sequences are filmed in long-shot style. Long not only in their scope, but in their duration. This allows for the audience to clearly witness the beauty and nuance of what is really the best fight choreography most of you will have ever have seen.

This is really fight choreographer Xin Xin Xiong’s show, and it’s to Hyams eternal credit that he didn’t muck it up by getting in the way. It is going to be impossible for this movie to not draw comparison with “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” largely because the sequences are injected with that all too specific “Hong Kong-John Woo-Time and Tide” adrenaline.

While there are acrobatics, there’s no “wire-fu” (at least it’s not particularly obvious), and the choreography isn’t simply “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” with rapiers. The sword work is very distinctly European, and the fight sequences are some of the most innovative and inventive to date. D’Artagnan’s (Justin Chambers) first fight sequence, in which he takes on five assailants, will leave you throwing yourself around in your seat just to communicate how glorious it was.

The next sequence manages to top that. The escalation continues through a stage coach sequence better than anything in 30 years of westerns, and some astonishing sword play while climbing up a tower by ropes. Just when you think they couldn’t possibly do anything else to improve upon the euphoric state of giddiness you’ve been left in by the last fight, they stage an entire battle while jumping around and between swinging and falling ladders. This will surely become an action classic.

Now, with all that said, is the movie itself any good? Of course not, don’t be ridiculous. Alexandre Dumas’ classic “The Three Musketeers” is rearranged and butchered. There are scenes about the political climate which awkwardly attempt to bring the scope of the tale back to a large and more encompassing view. The acting is both overly mannered and overly melodramatic. Tim Roth is simply doing a meaner interpretation of Archibald Cunningham from “Rob Roy” and Mena Suvari shows a range of facial expressions that wouldn’t make a mannequin jealous. It’s all rubbish, really. But then again, that is not the point.