The Three Musketeers Review

Summer is ending and the blockbuster season is coming to a close. As the sun tries mostly in vain to shine on our otherwise soggy island, Paul W.S. Anderson appears on the horizon, his goal being to bring forth the last hurrah of summer with a big budget family adventure film that the studios clearly didn’t think had what it took to tumble with the big releases that came out on a weekly basis from May to August.

The Three Musketeers loosely takes its plot from the original Dumas novel – D’Artagnan, a young bloke, decides he wants to join the legendary Musketeers Athos, Porthos and Aramis, so tracks down the semi-retired trio in Paris and goes off adventuring with them. The plot involves stolen diamonds, evil cardinals, swarthy English lords, buxom wenches, etc, etc, etc.

The film is ridiculously rubbish, totally inane, embarrassingly poor, baggier than Madness’s roomiest pair of strides and actually really rather watchable. Musketeers has an awareness of its own stupidity and its actors all mug along gamely. It may be very bad, but it’s never offensively so. Instead, it seems happy enough to raise the stakes of its own stupidity as it continues. A seventeenth century scuba diver in Venice? Why not? A son who speaks with a Californian drawl as his father talks with a ‘nu Joisey’ accent (whilst both are playing French men)? Sure! Milla Jovovich abseiling down a wall in a corset? Got it. Airships armed with machine guns that battle over the French countryside? Check. Sword fighting on the roof of Notre Dame cathedral whilst lightning flashes in the sky? Oh go on. There are moments stolen from almost any family adventure film you’d care to mention, from Indiana Jonesto National Treasure, giving it a very by the numbers feel, but nothing you can’t live with.

Anderson has assembled a cast comprised largely actors who ply their trade in second or third tier roles, which has the effect of everyone in it seeming somewhat familiar, but you’re not really sure where from. There’s Matthew Mcfayden, Ray Stevenson and Luke Evans as the Musketeers and Mads Mikkelsen, Juno Temple and Orlando Bloom (among others) bulking out the cast. Percy Jackson himself, Logan Lerman plays our hero D’Artagnan and unsuccessfully vies for the title of most annoying cast member with James bloody Corden (but it’s a telling sign that even his awful presence doesn’t ruin the movie). And then from nowhere, just when you thought he only did proper films these days, Christoph Waltz shows up doing his charming villain shtick. It’s all rather odd.

Despite its admirable commitment to ropiness and cliché, The Three Musketeers is actually pretty challenging not to enjoy at least a little bit (I tried really hard not to, honest I did). I liked the steampunk aspects – the airships, despite their utter stupidity, are pretty great and are fantastic in the battle sequences. The action scenes are clear, concise and well done and plenty of the cast are likable enough to carry the film.

It’s definitely for the kids and I wouldn’t advocate parting with cash to see it, but if and when The Three Musketeers is on some digital catch-up channel on a dull Tuesday evening, you could do a lot worse; (brace yourselves for weakest and most tenuous pun ever) E4 + 1 and one for all!

Resident Evil: Afterlife Preview

It seems a curious practice to me, that when production companies invite you down to their often illustrious headquarters in order to see and then write about their latest films, they feel the need to confiscate any tools you may have with you in order to better record the experience. Surely they want their films promoting as accurately as possible? In any case, I’ll stop whinging and get to the beef: Resident Evil: Afterlife. This latest episode in Paul WS Anderson’s horror franchise – and first to be filmed in 3D – is coming to cinemas imminently. A brief behind the scenes feature was screened this afternoon, to whet appetites for its release, in which Anderson and stars Milla Jovovich and Ali Larter waxed lyrical about the movie and the joys of filming in 3D.

Anderson, who once again wrote and produced the film, also returns to directorial duties for the first time since the original film (this being the fourth instalment). He was keen to stress the importance of filming in 3D – a process done, essentially, by filming with two cameras simultaneously, one filming the action, the other filming the action in a mirror between the two lenses – and was derisive of post-production 3D retro-fitting techniques (as used in Alice in Wonderland and Clash of the Titans). Anderson used the same rig and technicians as James Cameron employed on Avatar. The film was apparently conceived and written with 3D in mind, hence the use of environments and set pieces with a sense of depth, such as a Matrix-like combat sequence and footage of the heroines plummeting down a shaft, firing guns that we caught glimpses of. The 3D techniques used allow for single shot action sequences to go into slow motion and back again easily and remove the reliance many action directors have on annoyingly fast edits.

After the ‘making of’ footage ended (during in which Anderson compared his film to Avatar on several occasions), we were treated to a full sequence from the film, in which an eight foot, axe-wielding zombie slaughters a wimpy sidekick, and then sets about offing the heroines in a shower room. Cue plenty of cascading water droplets, swinging blades, sliding around, shotgun blasts and slow motion footage of our leading ladies covered in water and breathing heavily, all in 3D. Bits and pieces appear to fly out of the screen and the pounding soundtrack completes a not unimpressive action sequence.

Despite regularly receiving overwhelmingly negative critical responses, the Resident Evil series remains commercially viable due to its legion of fans, no less rabid than the zombies in the films themselves. This latest version should more than satisfy the hordes then, perhaps more so than ever with the added dimension. Whilst 3D has not been without criticism, horror movies are well suited to the new medium. As Anderson said, with its explosions, action sequences and tentacles, Resident Evil and 3D may make the perfect pairing.