The Three Musketeers

Ludicrous! Inconceivable! This dramatically expands the former limits of "over-the-top." And yet, it was hugely entertaining. The Three Musketeers  opens with a heist in Venice. Athos (Matthew Macfadyen) arrives at the location underwater, wearing some sort of scuba suit. While still submerged, he dispatches a guard by throwing a knife! As he emerges, he draws a pair of multiple shot crossbows (without the bow) and mows down more guards. Milady de Winter (Milla Jovovich) is waiting for him with one of the three keys they need. Meanwhile, Aramis (Luke Evans) leaps from a bridge to land on gondola, dispatching several guards before acquiring the second key. Porthos (Ray Stevenson) is chained in a dungeon when he is confronted by Cagliostro (Til Schweiger), the man holding the third key. Through a burst of Herculean strength, Porthos breaks his bonds, subdues all the guards, and takes the key from Cagliostro. The quartet convenes at DaVinci's Vault and enters thanks to the three keys. A ridiculous trap similar to the hall of darts in Raiders of the Lost Ark confronts them but Milady de Winter dashes and dodges her way through. The heroes have found the plans for DaVinci's war machine but are now cornered by a small army near the entrance. What to do? Time for some explosives. Yes, they blast a hole in the roof of the vault and the Grand Canal comes crashing down to sweep away Cagliostro's troops and our heroes emerge from the whirlpool into the canal. Huzzah!

That is only a teaser of what is to come. There is an air battle between two airships - standard galleon's that just happen to have a big blimp-like airbag to hold them aloft - where they fire broadsides at one another. One is armed with what might best be called a Gatlin cannon. Oh, and there's a flamethrower! Clearly, we are in an alternate reality of the 17th Century. On the comic side, the French king has a constant duel of fashion with the more fashionable Duke of Buckingham (Orlando Bloom). It is also quite funny when the king `punishes' the musketeers - who had just trounced Cardinal Richelieu's (Christoph Waltz) guards - by buying them a new wardrobe.

The movie ends with a promise of a sequel. The Duke of Buckingham is sailing to France with a huge fleet. As the camera pans back, we see he has an equally large fleet of airships!

Yes, it is completely silly and campy but it embraces that in such a way that even I, a history stickler, am willing to forgive the anachronisms.

 

Sadly, the sequel never came. The movie bombed at the box office, barely bringing in a quarter of its production costs.  Though I didn't mention it in this review, Logan Lerman (Percy Jackson) played D'Artagnan while Mads Mikkelsen was his doomed sparring opponent, Rochefort.  Director Paul W. S. Anderson is probably best known for the Resident Evil movies (which surely explains the casting of Milla Jovovich).  I found this fun because it was SO extreme though many might have found that off-putting.

 

The ultimate Three Musketeers is the 1973 version with Oliver Reed, Michael York, Charlton Heston, Faye Dunaway, and Raquel Welch.  Though played for comedy, it stays true to the story and confines itself to the technology of the period.

Valhalla Rising

The movie opens on a frigid moor somewhere in Europe around the year 1000. A one eyed man is locked in a cage. It seems he is a slave who serves his master as a pit fighter a la Conan the Barbarian. One-Eye, as he is eventually called, cannot be beaten even in a two on one fight. For reasons unexplained, no one is allowed to own One-Eye for more than 5 years. So, his master sells him. During transport across the desolate highlands, he makes good his escape, kills his guards, and marches back to avenge himself on his former owner. In the process, only one survives: the boy who brought his meals. With nowhere to go, the boy takes to following One-Eye.

While wandering aimlessly, One-Eye and Boy happen to encounter a band of Christian Soldiers who are on their way to the Holy Land. Of course, the First Crusade is nearly a century away. There was a Norwegian Crusade (1107 to 1110) which would be just right for this gang. Perhaps this is when the movie really takes place. Anyway, Boy serves as the spokesman for the pair as One-Eye is decidedly mute. The soldiers see that One-Eye is formidable and are unwilling to fight him so instead they recruit him.

The intrepid band sets sail and are immediately lost in a mist. There is much tension during this overly-long sequence, allowing for distrust to develop between the crew and One-Eye. The crew believes the mist is on account of Boy and tries to kill him. One-Eye instead kills the would-be killer and tosses the corpse into the sea. Feel the tension! Feel the distrust! Inexplicably, when they finally encounter land, some of the crew wonders if it is the Holy Land. None of them have the slightest idea of how to navigate the ship? As it is never stated where they started it is hard to guess what route they planned to take. However, it should have been relatively easy to follow the coasts, which is what Vikings commonly did, so these guys are just stupid. So, where are they? It turns out that they are in what will one day be called Delaware.

The movie ends with a whimper. The crew dies bit by bit, mostly through infighting though occasionally from arrows fired from unseen archers. Despite the deterioration, the leader of the soldiers announces his intention to claim this foreign land and Christianize its people. The crew, those few who are left, descends into madness. At last, only One-Eye and Boy are left as they try to find the ocean. In the final scene, the natives reveal themselves. One-Eye drops his weapons, walks among them, and closes his eye; the natives commence to beat him to death. Boy is left unharmed, standing on the Atlantic coast. Roll credits.

The movie has almost no dialogue. The main character never speaks a word and his motives are inscrutable. There was a point in the film where I thought One-Eye would be Odin (who notably has only one eye). Here might be a tale of the former Ruler of the Norse Gods fallen from his greatness with the coming of Christianity, reduced to slavery, but now free, wreaking havoc among the Christian Crusaders. No, nothing so interesting as that; he's just some one-eyed mute who happens to be an awesome warrior. The mood is oppressive, the pace plodding, and the plot pointless. The dull parts - which constitute the majority of the movie - are punctuated with gory violence. There are numerous flashbacks and flash-forwards, which prove more disorienting than helpful. Apparently, the director was inspired by some rune stones that were found in Delaware and this is his tale of how they got there. Oh. It all makes sense now. So, yet again we have a Viking movie that sucks. Sigh.

Clash of the Titans

The remake of the campy sword and sandals epic of 30 years ago is grimmer and grittier but not really better. Men have declared war on the gods (they discover the foolishness of such when one god makes a brief visit and lays waste) and Perseus, son of Zeus, is thrust to the forefront. He is a reluctant hero who despises the gods and, though gifts come to him from the gods, he refuses to use them. Where Harry Hamlin eagerly collected a magic sword, shield, helmet, and owl, Sam Worthington refuses to use such items on principle. Certainly makes for a very different Perseus. As in the original, Perseus must find a way to slay the kraken to save Andromeda. He is accompanied by soldiers of Argos, led by Draco (Mads Mikkelsen). In the original, the soldiers are just fodder to die along the way. This is largely true here too but these characters are developed so as to be more than the random red shirt.

The gods are generally reduced to Zeus and Hades. Sure, others make cameos but are mostly irrelevant. Liam Neeson, surely getting used to playing god (he's Aslan in Narnia), is Zeus. Likewise, Ralph Fiennes must be getting used to villainy (he is also Lord Voldimort), as he is Hades. Whereas Lawrence Oliver played Zeus as cranky and domineering, wearing a white himation (Greek Toga), Neeson is Good Cop to Fiennes Bad Cop and wears shining armor that puts Excalibur (1981) to shame.

Again, in keeping with the original, mythology is modified to better the story. Io (Gemma Arterton), a noted liaison of Zeus, has watched over Perseus from afar. She is cursed to not age because she refused a god's advances. I found myself thinking she was just a goddess in disguise since her wardrobe changed without apparent cause and she gave Perseus a good fight when she chose, appeared out of nowhere when needed, and also somehow 'guided' him as a baby to his rescue though I didn't see her swimming alongside. But no, she was just Io. Nix all that stuff about being turned into a cow and bearing a son to Zeus.

In order for the movie to have some multiculturalism, the Jinn are introduced. Most would think of the jinn as a Genie, though this jinn looks more like an evil wood-carving. As the Jinn didn't speak Greek (English), it couldn't really develop as a character. The inclusion is mostly annoying and its ability to self-destruct was plain bizarre. However, I did like that jinn rode giant scorpions, complete with pavilions.

If you thought the Kraken was big in the last movie, you haven't seen anything. This thing is immense. In fact, its approach should have flooded the city of Argos. When its stony corpse toppled into the sea, a tidal wave should have swept over the city. Devouring Andromeda would have been about as filling as eating one kernel of corn. Of note, the Kraken has gone from being a creature of Poseidon to being a child of Hades. In fact, the story states that the Kraken is so powerful that it overthrew the Titans who ruled before the current gods. Hmm. But Hades got the short straw and was banished to the underworld? Something doesn't add up.

Calibos (Jason Flemyng), the villain of the 1981 version, is here a pawn of Hades. It was he who tossed Perseus and his mother into the sea to kill them and learns he was only half-successful. Hades imbues Calibos with some divine breath (black, smoky, evil breath) to make him a challenge for the demigod Perseus. He's okay but he lacks the tragic love for Andromeda that gave the original some character.

All in all, it is an entertaining film with flashy action and epic battles but it rates no more than mindless popcorn fun.

King Arthur

Here is the previously mentioned movie review, originally posted August 2, 2004.

 

Foolishly, I saw King Arthur today and, as a member of this group, you shall suffer my rant.

I heard several good reviews for this movie so I dared to see it. Unfortunately, the reviewers knew nothing of history and could thus be fooled by this drivel. How is it that boys from southern Russia have Celtic or French names (i.e. Tristan and Lancelot)? Why are Saxons landing in Scotland? Why is it snowing and icy in one place but a day's ride away, the trees are still covered in leaves and the land is green with grass? Obviously, the makers of the film didn't know that Roman cavalry didn't have stirrups. How is it that Arthur claims to have met Pelagius when the man has been dead for nearly 50 years? Why are Romans recruiting boys from Sarmatia when the Goths swept away the Sarmatians centuries ago? Better still, the story starts in 452, while Attila the Hun is pillaging Gaul but somehow some Romans have time to collect boys from Sarmatia so they can send them to Britain (BTW, Rome abandoned Britain in 410). How is it that Saxons have crossbows several centuries before they are invented? If the Woads are SO dangerous north of Hadrian's Wall, why the hell are these important Romans living there? Guinevere, Warrior Princess: enough said on that topic. How is it that these otherwise primitive and tattooed Woads are using something like a trebuchet to fling fire at the Saxons? How is it that 6 knights prove decisive in a battle against hundreds of Saxons? Don't these Saxons know how to fight cavalry? There are tactics for defeating cavalry but these fellows don't know about them. I guess they had never seen a horse before. So the entirety of Arthur's command is 6 knights, the rest having died over the long years? Basically, this movie was horrendously bad, more so because it claimed to be the 'historical Arthur.'

I am something of a stickler for history so this truly irked me. I find that those less familiar with history enjoyed this and other historically inaccurate films (e.g. Gladiator). However, you have been warned.

 

The cast was impressive, including Clive Owen (Arthur), Ioan Gruffudd (Lancelot), Mads Mikkelsen (Tristan), Joel Edgerton (Gawain), Keira Knightley (Guinevere), and Stellan Skarsgard as the Saxon leader, Cerdic.  Also, the movie does dispense with the chrome armor of Excalibur (1981) and leans correctly toward Roman armor.  Of note, this was Antoine Fuqua's first sally into historical films.  His latest film, The Magnificent Seven, shows that he is still unsuited for films in a non-current setting.

 

Mindless popcorn fun?  Sure.  True story of King Arthur?  Absolutely not!