This Blu-ray allows us to see all the awful dialogue and lifeless action sequences of Paul W.S. Anderson's Alxendre Dumas adpatation in absolutely stunning high-definition quality....
Summit / 111 Minutes / 2011 / Rated PG-13 / Street Date: March 13, 2012
Paul W.S. Anderson is one of the luckiest guys in Hollywood: He has Milla Jovovich on his arm, and studios continue to keep giving him work. Roundly heralded as one of the most incompetent filmmakers of our generation, the guy somehow keeps milking enough money out of Resident Evil movies and other futuristic actioners (Soldier) that he gets access to direct projects like The Three Musketeers, a post-millennial reboot of the beloved adventure tale. I don't know how he does it.
A response to this Blu-ray edition of the film is two-fold. On one hand, you have the disc itself, which is an absolute gem. in terms of technical savvy and illuminating bonus material, The Three Musketeers is a perfect encapsulation of what Blu-ray can accomplish: It marries high-def clarity with seamless viewer interaction. Unfortunately, there's no way around the fact that The Three Musketeers isn't just a runt of a movie - it's a megastorm of a dud. Failing on all fronts, Anderson may be able to utilize technical cinematic elements to grand results, but the cast here is emotionally and dramatically unable to do anything with The Three Musketeers' material.
The title characters - played by Matthew Macfayden, Luke Evans, and Ray Stevenson - have some trouble at a Venice fair of sorts when the beautiful Milady (Jovovich) sells out the trio, instead giving the long-desired plans for an airship by Leonardo Da Vinci to their rival, the Duke of Buckingham (Orlando Bloom). This act breaks up the band a bit - this is made official when the mean ol' Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz) demands it to be so - but after some time passes, young D'Artagnan (Logan Lerman) decides that it's time to get the boys back together and swashbuckle their way through new adventures. And they do.
Any vestige of the original material in Anderson's Three Musketeers waves bye-bye in the opening credits here. This may be a Dumas adaptation in name and base construction, but every element of the story's plot design and character evolution has been dumbed down so heavily that there really is no way for anyone on screen to wriggle out from underneath it. Rightly lambasted by critics during its underperforming theatrical run, on Blu-ray The Three Musketeers may offer an occasional high-def home theater thrill, but that's exclusively accomplished by the guys and girls turning the knobs behind this picture's seismic video and audio capacities, not Anderson himself.
