Tripwire Reviews The Count Of Monte Cristo

A Dish Best Served Cold

Tripwire’s editor-in-chief Joel Meadows takes a look at The Count Of Monte Cristo out in UK cinemas now…

The Count Of Monte Cristo
Directors: Alexandre de La Patellière, Matthieu Delaporte
Stars: Pierre Niney, Bastien Bouillion, Anais Demoustier

The two French Three Musketeers films, released in 2022 and 2023 (D’Artagnan and Milady) were decent international hits, making around $50m, proving that the audience’s appetite for Dumas adaptations is still strong.

Both de la Patelliere and Delaporte were involved with the Musketeers films and so The Count Of Monte Cristo was an inevitable choice for them.

Like The Musketeers, big and small screen adaptations of this Dumas epic haven’t exactly been uncommon. We’ve had ones with Richard Chamberlain, an excellent French TV miniseries with Gerard Depardieu and even going back to the beginning of cinema, a 1934 adaptation with Robert Donat. This version clocks in at just shy of three hours but thanks to the lightness of touch from its directors and a likeable cast led by the charismatic Niney as Edmond Dantes, it never flags or feels padded.

The story of the Count is a simple one: Edmond Dantes (Niney) is arrested on his wedding day for a crime he didn’t commit and sentenced to 14 years on the foreboding island prison of Chateau D’If. Escaping from his prison, he concocts a plan to take revenge on those who have wronged him.

The Count of Monte Cristo is a wonderfully timeless adventure tale which partly explains why it continues to beguile audiences centuries after it was written. Like Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlett Pimpernel, you can see Monte Cristo’s influence on modern tales and protagonists like James Bond, The Shadow and Batman with a man using his immense wealth to set the scales of justice.

Visually as with the two Three Musketeers films, The Count of Monte Cristo is a lavishly appointed affair with a production design approach that would put the average Hollywood blockbuster to shame. Cristo’s house is this wonderfully ornate and elegant affair with his lair complete with all the tools required to take his vengeance and set the world to rights.

Niney is fantastic as the central protagonist, a man who has been betrayed by those around him and haunted by his past. There is a truly magnetic presence to his performance here as he holds the film together. The supporting cast isn’t too shabby either with actors like Laurent Lafitte who plays de Villefort and Patrick Mille who portrays the duplicitious Danglers here adding an extra touch of class to the production here.

There is a universality to Dumas’ tales, which is why they continue to be adapted, and The Count Of Monte Cristo 2024 version is a very French version of his story but told in broad strokes which is why, like the two Musketeers films, it will appeal to an international cinemagoing audience.

The Count Of Monte Cristo is in cinemas now