Dumas' novel as one of the all time great concepts for a swashbuckler -Siamese twins are born, separated at birth, and raised apart so the evil lord who killed their parents will think they're dead. They they are reunited to wreck vengeance. Edward Small could be counted upon to produce a solid swashbuckler and this one gets off to a strong beginning- with Corsican celebrations ruined by evil Akim Tamiroff, who cheats by having dad (Henry Wilcoxon) shot by someone else, then the two babies raised separately, one in the scrub of Corsica, the other in Paris.
But then the script drops the ball big time by throwing away the scene where the twins meet: instead of taking a bit of time establishing the two separately, the film just has them turn 21, an old doctor introduces them, says "you two are brothers", they decide to get vengeance - and that's it. Talk about a great opportunity wasted. It also makes their decision to seek vengeance a bit flippant - how about establishing that their dad was nice and actually worth avenging, for instance? (Dad mayhave deserved to die) Also, the two don't really use the identical twins factor much - they raid places separately, but they are known as "a bandit in a red cap" - that could be separate people. They needed to have people actually see Fairbanks Jnr in the flesh, arrest him - then have witnesses say "no that's not him". But then I guess they couldn't use the Scarlet Pimpernel like shenanigans that follow when Fairbanks Jnr pretends to be a dandy.
To compensate for this the script throws in some fresh twists. It's particularly good how the Corsican bandit brother doesn't actually like his new brother very much - indeed, he gets sick of him and starts hating him, partly because he's sick of feeling things his brother feels (the comic potentials of this is not really exploited), partly because they love the same woman (Ruth Warrick, Mrs Citizen Kane, a bit bland). He hates him so much that he refuses to come to his brother's rescue and only attacks Tamiroff when he things brother is dead (there is a revival drug, which perhaps inspired William Goldman in The Princess Bride). The biggest kicker is that one of the brother's dies -this is a big shock, but a very effective one. The sets are good, there is a solid bunch of action, Tamiroff is a strong villain (though he needs a better side kick - the actor who plays Tamiroff's evil henchman,the part normally played by Basil Rathbone, is seriously undercast), and Fairbanks Jnr is excellent in the lead - totally at home with the derring-do and romance, and easily distinguishes between characters. A tighter script that better milked its source novel and a better second villain and this would have been one of the true classics of the genre, instead of a semi-classic.
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