The Three Musketeers

The Three Musketeers - Dir. Paul W.S. Anderson (2011)

Paul W.S. Anderson is a name feared by all right-thinking film critics. Much like Michael Bay, M. Night Shyamalan, and Uwe Boll, when Anderson's name appears in the credits, nothing good can come of it. Anderson takes time away from video game adaptations for The Three Musketeers, in which he turns Alexandre Dumas's seminal swashbuckling adventure into a garish and modernized thrill ride.

The story begins in Venice with Athos (Matthew Macfadyen), Aramis (Luke Evans), and Porthos (Ray Stevenson) breaking into the vault of Leonardo da Vinci in order to steal blueprints for an airship. They are betrayed by Athos's paramour, Milady de Winter (Milla Jovovich), who steals the plans for Lord Buckingham (Orlando Bloom) in order to build a fleet of flying war machines.

A year later, the Musketeers are now living in disgrace. Athos has become a drunkard, Aramis is relegated to being a glorified meter maid, and Porthos lives off richer women. Along comes the hotshot D'Artagnan (Logan Lerman) who hopes to follow in his father's footsteps as a Musketeer. They band together and uncover a plot by Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz) and Milady to plunge France into war against England by fabricating an illicit affair between Buckingham and the Queen (Juno Temple).

The Three Musketeers lives up to the reputation of its director as a mindless spectacle that is light on intelligence and heavy on action. There's plenty of lavishly choreographed swordfights such as when the Musketeers face the Cardinal's guards with the odds ten to one. These clashes are broken up with slow motion flourishes in the vein of Zack Snyder or the Wachowskis. Anderson's wife, Milla Jovovich, gets her chance to shine once again performing Resident Evil-style stunts while wearing ornate 17th century gowns and tight corsets. Her Milady is part-Mata Hari and part-ninja assassin. It's all so ludicrous, but the movie is pushed into absurd boundaries when a steampunk element is introduced through the use of flying pirate ships armed with turrets and flamethrowers. And just when all this action builds to a crescendo, it sinks like the Hindenburg thanks to a non-ending that shamelessly sets up a sequel.

Matthew Macfadyen and Luke Evans give solid performances as Athos and Aramis while Ray Stevenson follows Thor by once again playing the boisterous member of a trio of warriors. Logan Lerman is far too white bread to leave any impression as D'Artagnan and his romance with Gabriella Wilde as one of the Queen's ladies in waiting is equally bland. Christoph Waltz is never given the chance to really shine as one of the movie's many villains. As the Cardinal's henchman, Rochefort, Mads Mikkelsen is easily the best thing in Musketeers, playing a one-eyed man for the third time after Casino Royale and Valhalla Rising. Orlando Bloom is the worst thing in the movie. His attempts at playing an over-the-top bad guy are awful and thoroughly unconvincing.

As he did with Resident Evil: Afterlife, Anderson shot The Three Musketeers in 3D, but the process hardly adds anything to the experience aside from a dimmer picture and the occasional blade pointed at your face.

The Three Musketeers cost $75 million and has so far barely scrapped together $20 million in box office gross. Surely, Summit Entertainment can find better uses for all those piles of Twilight money. Even with a strong ensemble cast, Musketeers can't offer the empty excitement expected of shallow popcorn fare.

Rating: * (*****)

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief - Dir. Chris Columbus (2010)


Percy Jackson is Clash of the Titans for the Harry Potter crowd. The latest teen-lit property to make its way to the big screen, The Lightning Thief is the first of a proposed franchise based on the best-selling series by Rick Riordan.

The title character, Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman), is a high school student who lives with his mother (Catherine Keener) and abusive stepfather (Joe Pantoliano). He has dyslexia and finds some measure of calm hiding underwater. Turns out, Percy’s father is Poseidon (Kevin McKidd), the Greek god of the seas. His best friend, Grover (Brandon T. Jackson), is a satyr charged with his protection. Percy’s teacher (Pierce Brosnan) is really a centaur named Chiron who is the head instructor for a drill camp filled with other godlings.

Percy learns the truth about his life when he is accused of stealing Zeus’s (Sean Bean) lightning bolt. A civil war is brewing between the gods and Percy’s mother is kidnapped by Hades (Steve Coogan who looks like a burnt out rocker in his leather pants). Percy and Grover embark on a quest to rescue her accompanied by Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario), the daughter of Athena (Melina Kankaredes). The trio must gather the pearls of Persephone (Rosario Dawson) and do battle mythological creatures such as the Hydra and Medusa (Uma Thurman).

To kick off their new film series, Fox made a smart choice in choosing Chris Columbus who directed the first two Harry Potter films. The problem is those opening installments were the most pedestrian movies of the series. It wasn’t until the brought in more accomplished directors like Alfonso Cuaron and Mike Newell that the Potter films improved by leaps and bounds.

Is Percy Jackson a terrible movie? No, but it’s not an exceptional one either. It’s perfectly acceptable filmmaking. There’s nothing particularly stylish about the direction or production design and the characters are painted in very broad strokes.

Rating: **

Gamer

Gamer - Dir. Neveldine/Taylor (2009)

The purveyors of punk cinema and anarchic action, the duo known as Neveldine/Taylor wrote and directed Crank and Crank 2: High Voltage, two of my favorite guilty pleasures. Over-the-top, cartoonish, vulgar, and sophomoric, the Crank films were infused by video game conventions and sold like crack to today’s Red Bull generation. Neveldine/Taylor continues their brand of video game-infused cinema with Gamer, a film that acts as an updated version of The Running Man.

At some nebulous point in the future, mega-billionaire Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall) develops a form of nanotechnology that allows one person to control another via the internet. Castle initially uses this new tech for Society, think The Sims with real people. Here, folks are dressed in neon day-glo pimp raver fetish gear and forced to copulate, drug themselves, and laugh off grievous injury. Castle’s next big hit is Slayers, where Death Row inmates can win their chance at freedom by competing in a real life first-person shooter.

The biggest star of Slayers is Kable (Gerard Butler taking on the Jason Statham role) who is only three games away from becoming a free man. Kable’s only thoughts are for his wife Angie (Amber Valleta), a reluctant cast member of Society, and their daughter who was put into foster care. Of course, forces are working against Kable to prevent him from winning the game, not the least of which is Kable’s whiny rich boy controller.

Crank has all the trademarks of Neveldine and Taylor’s sledgehammer sense of plot. There’s the morbidly obese pervert who controls Angie in Society while dipping his foot in greasy vats of maple syrup. There’s Hall’s evil tycoon character whose acts of malevolence include world domination, a bad country fried southern accent, and wearing loafers without socks. The world of Slayers looks like a futuristic combination of Saving Private Ryan and Call of Duty while the action is shot with the usual handheld cameras and rapid-fire edits. However, Gamer has none of the breakneck energy of the Crank films. Neveldine & Taylor attempt to get more serious with Gamer by attempting to slow the pace and pile on the social commentary. The attempt falls flat on its face. It’s hard to take a dramatic turn when you’ve got Michael C. Hall leading a gang of goons in a song-and-dance number set to Sammy Davis Jr.’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”

Gamer gathers together a strong cast with some surprising faces filling out the supporting cast. Neveldine and Taylor score their second failure in being unable to utilize any of them properly. Alison Lohman, hot off her lead role in Drag Me to Hell, appears oh so briefly as a member of a revolutionary hacker group. Zoe Bell pops in as a fellow Slayer only to get her head blown off a minute later. You’d figure if someone were to cast actors like Kyra Sedgwick or Heroes’ Milo Ventimiglia, they’d have them do something of note.

Gamer pales in comparison to District 9. It suffers from a poorly thought-out story full of bland action that builds to an incredibly anti-climactic ending. Sorry, but that dream match between King Leonidas and Dexter didn’t live up to expectations.

Rating: * ½