By Bryce Casselman

I remember vividly as a child watching two movies with my brothers. One was the first Planet of the Apes movie and the other was the 1973 version of The Three Musketeers, directed by Richard Lester. I remember, even as a kid, laughing at the wisecracking musketeers and watching with wide-eyed as they bravely fought off the enemy with their swords.

In 1993, Stephen Herek directed another remake of The Three Musketeers that was not as good as the '73 version, but it was still funny and fairly entertaining to watch.

Director Peter Hyams (The Relic, End of Days) brings the latest remake of Alexandre Dumas' classic novel Les Trois Mousquetaires to the silver screen, The Musketeer. Unfortunately, this movie is missing more than just the plural form of the title.

The Musketeer stars Justin Chambers (Liberty Heights) as D'Artagnan a Musketeer wannabe who comes to join the legendary group just after Cardinal Richelieu, played by Stephen Rea (The End of the Affair), persudes the King of France to disband the Musketeers and replaces them with the Cardinal's own guard.

Richelieu is secretly planning to discredit the king with help from Febre, Tim Roth (Planet of the Apes), who, 10 years earlier, had killed both of D'Artagnan's parents in front of him.

D'Artangnan spends the rest of the movie trying to protect the Queen of France, played by French-born actress Catherine Deneuve (Dancer in the Dark), and the lovely Constance Bonacieux, played by Mena Suvari (American Pie 2), all-the-while trying to prove that he is worthy to become a musketeer.

One may ask, what can we do with this movie today that couldn't be done in 1993? Special effects? Better fighting sequences? Possibly better dialogue or acting?

The answer to the above questions is absolutely nothing.

Although this movie had the potential to mix new action sequence technology with a classic tale, the fight scenes turned out to be overdone and obnoxious to watch. There was one particular scene where D'Artagnan is fighting a group of soldiers by himself, never killing or simply knocking any of them unconscious. He just flailed around the room like Richard Simmons on crack, constantly blocking the same men's swords over and over. I got so annoyed at this that I lost my patience and called out to the hero: "Will you just kill someone already?"

Also, as the name of the film describes, the main three musketeers that are involved in D'Artagnan's quest are so watered down in this version that they might as well not be in the movie at all.

If you've seen any of the Three Musketeer movies, then you've seen this movie already. If you haven't had the opportunity to catch one, I would recommend renting the '73 version and miss The Musketeer altogether.

MS
MS

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