The Three Musketeers

Is it me or do they look like vampires?

It baffles me to think that of all the Pirates of the Caribbean rip-offs and cash-ins of the past few years, Pirates 4 has been the least good. Oh well...

So yeah, Paul W. S. Anderson's The Three Musketeers is an action-adventure movie with snarky characters set in a historical period, vaguely based on some previously existing intellectual property (I think there will be seen as their own genre when we look back twenty years from now). The work being loosely adapted this time is Alexandre Dumas' novel by the same name.

Not having (yet) read the book, I can't say how faithful the movie is to it, though the Wikipedia summary of the novel's plot does look vaguely familiar. I was going to keep a mental count on all the anachronisms, but I gave up ten minutes into the movie. It wasn't the underwater crossbows and 17th century scuba gear that broke me, though. You see, the opening action scene is set in Venice, where the heroes are sent to steal the archives of Leonardo da Vinci. If you, dear reader, ever decide to involve da Vinci in your story in some way, please note that he lived in Florence. Italy has more cities than Rome and Venice, you see.

Most of the plot revolves around political intrigue between King Louis XIII (Freddie Fox), Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz), Queen Anne (Juno Temple) and The Count of Buckingham (Orlando Bloom). Richelieu and Buckingham want to take over France (even though Richelieu rules in all but name, as he did in real history) and chew scenery, and keep scheming against each other and the French royal couple to accomplish that. They employ the director's wife a seductive spy and agent called Milady (Milla Jovovich, who is much hotter here than in The Fifth Element) to accomplish their tasks.

Did you notice that I didn't mention the main characters in that last paragraph? There's a reason for that. The Three Musketeers (and d'Artagnan) themselves are just pawns for the plot, and are basically bribed to take part in it at all. In the second act of the story, they're cast out of their own movie for half an hour so the important characters can advance the story for a change. I'd list the actors for the four, but they honestly left so little impression on me I might as well not. Most of the time, the characters aren't even given much to do, and don't partake in almost any character development. In fact, d'Artagnan is the only one to get an arc, and it doesn't really go anywhere. He starts out as a hot-headed, cocky asshole, bound to get himself killed if he doesn't grow up, and he just kind of... becomes a dashing hero in the finale for no reason.

The other actors are great, though, and the funniest moments of the movie come from performances rather than writing. Freddie Fox manages to be ridiculous, and yet very sympathetic and honest, as the bumbling King. Jovovich oozes charisma and wittiness. And the villains... how do I put this? Orlando Bloom is a more entertaining villain than Christoph Waltz. That's right. Legolas just beat Hans Landa. You see, Bloom's previous resumé is filled with boring, straight-laced, nullodramatic heroes. Now we have him playing the cackling, villainous foreigner with a wacky accent and an even wackier mustache. It's gloriously amusing. Waltz is good as well, though he doesn't ham it up as much as a movie of this... campiness, would justify.

The action is so over-the-top I don't blame the guy two seats right from me for giggling like a lunatic for most of the film. Now, the sword-fights are actually well coreographed and shot, and look pretty restrained as far as swordfights in action-adventure movies go. The other action scenes are basically whatever the writers could think up at any given moment. There's scenes where Jovovich is basically redoing her fights from the Resident Evil films, except now she's wearing a dress, and near the end the movie turns into a rip-off of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. I'm not even making that up.

Ridiculous, dumb, simplistic, hyperactive, anachronistic, shallow... yeah, this is a blockbuster, all right. I liked it, though I have this itch its charm won't persist on a second viewing. They're obviously setting up a sequel, and they can count me in.

Oh yeah, and this movie was this 3D. Wait, it was? I could hardly tell...

Drive

Drive is a movie about the Driver (Ryan Gosling), a man without a name or a past. He works as a stuntman in Hollywood films, a mechanic in a garage and a getaway driver for mobsters and robbers. By coincidence, the Driver happens to befriend the girl next door and her young son, and is motivated to pull off a gig to help them out in a tight spot. One thing leads to another, and he finds himself in deep shit, being chased after by hitmen and gangsters aplenty.

I want to stress something out for you: This is not an action movie. There are chase scenes in cars, and gory executions outside them, but they are not the focus of the plot, and if you're only going in to see cars and violence, you'll be let down. In fact, I'd be willing to say that the second-biggest problem with the film is that it does many things well, but doesn't focus on any one aspect of itself well enough. It doesn't go "all the way" with the action, the drama, the crime plot or the characterisations, but feels like all the different subplots were intentionally left half-finished.

Here are the things that Drive has going for it: the Driver is a well-crafted enigma, whose true nature will be up to debate for years to come (my money's on him being autistic); the cinematography, directing and editing are top-notch, and manage to really imprint emotion into scenes and shots where almost nothing is happening; the setting somehow manages to be triumphantly eighties while actually setting place in the modern day; the driving and violence, while short-lived, is fantastically executed (no pun intended); and finally, the soundtrack is really good, though most of the music genres presented aren't really my bag.

Aside from the great main performance, the actors are kind of hit-and-miss. Carey Mulligan as the love interest is very underplayed and ordinary, which is kind of the point, but I don't think her character just has chemistry with the Driver because he's underplayed for completely different, better, reasons. Ron Perlman is the world's most bitter 59-year-old mobster, who's trying very hard to act like a twenty-something gangsta. It is glorious. Albert Brooks (who played the villain in The Simpsons Movie) is the straight-laced businessman gangster, who won't lose his cool until it's really effective to do so. I swear I've seen the exact same character somewhere, but I can't tell where...

To give my main criticism for Drive, I'm going to have to break my own rule and go into spoiler territory. Therefore, SLIGHT NON PLOT-RELATED SPOILER-ISH MATERIAL EXISTS BEYOND THIS SENTENCE. The film doesn't have a climax. It kind of slows down for the final twenty minutes, and then stops. End credits. There was no way to actually fit it into the plot, but I really could have used another chase scene somewhere in there...

SPOILERS END HERE.

I can't really give a definite "go see this" or "don't" about this movie. It depends so much on what you're in the mood for, and whether you can tolerate a little slower and more atmospheric moviemaking. If you can actually enjoy how a movie is shot and edited... this'll be a treat! It's the closest thing to a Grand Theft Auto: Vice City movie we'll ever see.