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Tripwire Reviews The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan

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3 years ago

August 28, 2023

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Showing Their Mettle

Tripwire’s editor-in-chief Joel Meadows reviews The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan out on Blu-Ray now…
The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan
Director: Martin Bourboulon
Stars: François Civil, Vincent Cassel, Romain Duris, Eva Green

Dumas’ adventure classic The Three Musketeers has been adapted to the big and small screen more than fifty times in a variety of different languages. The latest one is a French production split into two instalments.

For English language audiences, Richard Lester’s Three and Four Musketeers are the ones they are most familiar with. As someone who hasn’t read the original book but are au fait with the 1970s versions, The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan directed by Martin Bourboulon hoves reasonably close to the Reed/ Chamberlain/ Finlay and York story.

Cassel, who is a familiar face in US cinemas as well as French, is the disgraced Count D’Athos while Romain Duris, an actor with an impressive body of work in Francophone film, plays former Catholic priest Aramis. Marmaï Pio is an actor who has appeared in a few French films over the past few years and plays the portly Porthos. The final piece of the puzzle is François Civil who is D’Artagnan, who comes to Paris to make his name but finds himself embroiled in the machinations of Cardinal Richelieu, played in an understatedly sinister fashion by Eric Ruf. The other actor who is a face well known to US and UK audiences is Eva Green, best known for performances in films like Casino Royale and TV shows like Penny Dreadful, who plays the duplicitious Milady here.

This latest iteration of The Three Musketeers is beautifully staged and exquisitely shot but less bawdy, knockabout and humourous than Lester’s version although director Bouboulon doesn’t stint on the pacing here. There is excellent chemistry between the Musketeers and Cassel lends things a little extra gravitas as the Musketeer accused of the murder of a girl of questionable upbringing. Civil is suitably naïve as D’Artagnan although he does evolve as a character as the film proceeds.

The plot concerning the affair between Queen Anne of France and England’s prime minister the Duke Of Buckingham places the Musketeers stuck in the middle between the Machiavellian plotting of Richelieu and the welfare of France and the Queen herself. Like the Lester predecessor, this is the main macguffin of the film, holding it all together. D’Artagnan’s initially unrequited love for the Queen’s dressmaker Constance Bonacieux, played here by Lyna Khoudri, also acts as another driver for the plot, leaving us on a cliffhanger for the second film The Three Musketeers: Milady which will be released theatrically this December.

The Three Musketeers are perennially favourite fictional creations despite their vintage and this latest film taps into their evergreen appeal. For fans of adventure and derring do, The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan will tick all of the necessary boxes.

JOEL MEADOWS

The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan is on Blu Ray in the UK now