Jan Gregor Kremp
The Musketeer Review
Terrible
After all its TV commercial posturing about "re-envisioning" a classic as a post-Hong Kong actioner, "The Musketeer" betrays the truth of its utter lack of real ambition in the casting of a wooden, charmlessly handsome, totally generic Hollywood pretty boy in the title role.
His name is Justin Chambers (Jennifer Lopez's irritating Italian suitor in "The Wedding Planner"), and he looks and acts like he got the part only because Chris O'Donnell -- the industry's preferred choice for glinty-eyed, mannequin-souled heroes -- already played D'Artagnan in Disney's weightless 1993 adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' "The Three Musketeers."
Out to avenge the murder of his father some 14 years before, this D'Artagnan is "all for one" without the "one for all." Ostensibly, he ventures to Paris to join King Louis XIII's elite guard, only to find them disbanded and in disarray following a power shift that favored troops loyal to the power-mad Cardinal Richelieu (Stephen Rea).
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