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Alexandre Dumas' novel "The Three Musketeers" has had a healthy screen life, with everyone from Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, and Oliver Reed taking up swords at one time or another. Spin-offs like "The Return of the Musketeers" and "D'Artagnan's Daughter" have kept the concept nice and fresh, though the less said about the animated pooches of the Dog-tagnan cartoon, the better.
With so much competition around, director Peter Hyams obviously felt the need to make this update of the story really stand out and, whatever else you might say about it, "The Musketeer" is really eye-catching. The fight choreography from Hong Kong action expert Xin Xin Xiong ("Time and Tide", "Double Time") jazzes up the films's thrust and parry with lots of gravity-defying swordsmanship. D'Artagnan (Chambers) flies through the air, runs up walls, and generally look as though he's just stepped out of a 17th century prequel to "The Matrix".
The story follows D'Artagnan as he sets out from his village to join the Musketeers - the King's elite guard - as they try to protect the French monarch from the scheming Cardinal Richelieu (Rea) and his evil henchman Febre (Roth, shamelessly hamming it up in an attempt to rival Alan Rickman in "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves"). Although he doesn't realize it, D'Artagnan's quest will bring him face to face with the man who killed his father.
While there's plenty of swash in the fight scenes, the rest of the film buckles under the weight of an overripe script. Floundering their way through the cheesy dialogue, every one of the star-studded cast look painfully embarrassed. Proof that as mindless fun goes, you'd have to have a lobotomy to get any laughs out of this travesty. Maybe that cartoon dog wasn't so bad after all.
