French musketeers unite to win, sisters fail to scare
MARTIN BOURBOULON directs this star-studded adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s classic novel. Dumas’s book has had countless film and TV adaptations throughout the years, ranging from live-action to numerous animated incarnations. But now it’s time for French cinema to reclaim one of its best and enduring stories in this fast-paced and hugely engaging interpretation.
The setting is France, 1627. D’Artagnan (François Civil), a young nobleman, rides to Paris in the hope of joining the musketeers, a group of soldiers loyal to the king. D’Artagnan finds himself involved in a violent scuffle and is left for dead. His attackers, led by a mysterious young woman (Eva Green), have been hired by the
Jduplicitous Cardinal de Richelieu (Eric Ruf) to help bring down the king and his queen (Vicky Krieps) .
After recovering from his ordeal and finally making it to the court of King Louis XIII ( a magnificent Louis Garrel), D’Artagnan meets Athos, Aramis and Porthos (played by Vincent Cassel, Romain Duris and Pio Marmaï) under less than ideal circumstances.
The young man also falls for the beautiful Constance (The French Dispatch star Lyna Khoudri), who also happens to be very close to the queen.
Bourboulon, whose 2022 Eiffel biopic left a lot to be desired, here delivers one of the best adaptations of Dumas’s work yet.
He employs just the right amount of humour and attention to detail to create a truly exhilarating romp full of exciting twists and intricate fight scenes, which is delightful from start to finish. It’s good that a second installment is on its way. EWISH DIRECTOR Sam Remember Francois Civil’s Raimi’s film The Evil name as we are likely to see Dead was famously a lot more of him in the banned in the UK when future. it was released in 1983. The ban was part of the crackdown on what was then referred to as “video nasties”.
The Evil Dead was eventually unbanned in the UK in the early 1990s and three more films made their way onto our cinema screens, but none had as much cultural impact as Raimi’s original, and one suspects the ban had more than a little to do with this.
Now, 40 years after the release of the first movie, the franchise has added a fifth film to the series with Raimi and legendary Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell acting as executive producers. This time the story follows Beth (Lily Sullivan), a rock concert technician who is reunited with her estranged sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) and then finds herself in a pretty tight spot.
Beth and Elly’s reunion hits a snag when a strange book is unearthed by one of Elly’s teenage kids. As an evil entity is unleashed on the family, Beth battles to save her nieces and nephew from the evil presence, but is it already too late?
Writer-director Lee Cronin does his best with a fairly lame premise and a narrative that purports to deal with deeper socio-economic issues, but barely scratches the surface. Instead, Cronin resorts to the most basic horror tropes and unimaginative jump-scares in a film that feels outdated and stale.
There are some interesting nods to the earlier films throughout and some half decent performances for the young cast but, all in all, there is a lot about the film that just doesn’t add up.
The worst thing is that it is simply not scary enough. It is a real shame as this movie had potential, especially considering the history behind the franchise. Alas though, I was bored for at least half of its 90-minute running time.