I remember the general lack of excitement when this came out - the 1973 and 1974 films were hits but it wasn't as though they were hugely iconic, I mean there were lots of other versions of the tale that kept playing on TV.
Still, I didn't mind it - and I don't mind it now. It's a shaggy dog sort of movie, ambling along with its various subplots the way that, well, the 1973-74 versions did. It does lack the big emotional undercurrent of the original Musketeers - there's no Milady killing D'artagnan's Constance, and then being captured and executed, with Athos being Milady's ex.
It has some good ideas - having the villain be Milady's daughter Justine, adding a new spunkrat (C Thomas Howell) to be Athos' son, and introducing Cyrano de Bergerac, Louis XIV, Charles I, and Oliver Cromwell.
It's the serious moments here that works best - the killing of Milady's executioner, the death of Charles I, Richard Chamberlain and Oliver Reed getting heavy with Philippe Noiret. It's a shame there wasn't something else of more emotional weight to match the death of Milady or Constance - like say one of the Musketeers. Lester/George MacDonald Fraser clearly couldn't bring themselves to kill off Justine.
The band don't get back together until the end - it's York and Finlay for a bit, then York, Reed, Finlay and Howell, then Chamberlain comes in at the end. But that's dramatic.
The acting is good. I enjoyed Michael York's ageing juvenile interpretation of D'artagnan, Oliver Reed is excellent as always as the moral but boozy Athos, Chamberlain so much fun I wish we'd seen more of him. Frank Finlay gets some screen time but struggles to make an impact - it may be his character. Kim Cattral is a lot of fun as the villainess and C. Thomas Howell at least looks the part as Raoul. It's said to see Roy Kinnear knowing he'd die making this. Bill Paterson is spectacularly good as Oliver Cromwell - the best depiction of that character on screen I've seen.
This film is always a little bit in second gear but I enjoyed it.
An aside: maybe this would've done better had it been a remake of The Man in the Iron Mask. A big role for a newer star, a more road tested source material, you could still have used the original stars. Just a thought.
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