Cuplog

What would happen if you combined a film adaptation of the greatest swashbuckling epic of all time, Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, with a Chinese kung fu flick? Apparently the makers of The Musketeer (2001) asked such a question, and the answer is nothing good.

The stunts, which are likely the reason (or excuse) for the film being made at all, are intended to awe and amuse the audience, but merely bore with their ridiculousness. There are two basic schools of martial arts films. One emphasizes the true physical mastery of the martial artist (such as Bruce Lee or Tony Jaa); the other emphasizes the martial artist as a fantasy hero, with wires to enable the characters to perform superhuman feats and various techniques to convey superhuman speed and agility. The greatest swashbuckling movies, for the most part, can count themselves as kin to the first type of martial arts movie, going all the way back to the derring-do of Douglas Fairbanks Sr., with stunts that were all the more shocking for their audacity because they were real. In much the same way that one is astounded by the skill and courage of trapeze artists, the best of the classic swashbuckling films had actors who did all their own fencing, climbing, leaping, diving, chandelier-swinging, and precipice-balancing. Replace all that with wires, stunt doubles, and very careful editing, and you rip the soul out of swashbuckling. And you get The Musketeer.

The inappropriate stylings of stunt choreographer Xin Xin Xiong aside, The Musketeer manages to reduce its greatest strength, its source material, to a bland and predictable tale of revenge, halfheartedly and wearily performed by its better actors (Catherine Deneuve) and woodenly performed by its lesser actors (the rest of the cast). Characters who had a richness of complexity are impoverished by the writers to a state of two-dimensionality that could have been just as easily fulfilled by cardboard standees. Whether assessed as an adaptation or revision of The Three Musketeers, The Musketeer is a uniform failure.

• Writing: Terrible
• Directing: Mediocre
• Acting: Poor
• Cinematography: Fair
• Stunts: Poor
• Swordplay: Mediocre
• Panache: Terrible

Overall Rating: Poor
Swashbuckling Rank: Poor

If any film could be declared the ultimate swashbuckling film, Scaramouche (1952) would easily qualify as a contender for the title. It is said to have both the longest duelling scene and the greatest number of duels of any movie. Whether this is true or not, the duels are a marvel of fight choreography. Both Stewart Granger and Mel Ferrer performed all of their own duels and stunts, which is all the more remarkable when it is discovered that their duel on the railing of a theatre balcony was executed without a net. The action is spectacular, but the drama and the comedy (essential to a film named after the clown of the Commedia dell’arte) give the film its impeccable balance. Scaramouche is truly one of the great masterpieces of the genre.

• Writing: Great
• Directing: Superb
• Acting: Good
• Cinematography: Great
• Stunts: Superb
• Swordplay: Superb
• Panache: Superb

Overall Rating: Great
Swashbuckling Rank: Superb