The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan [Blu-ray]

This is a review of the 2023 French language film ‘The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan’. We watched it on the excellent August 2023 Region B2 Blu-ray from 'Entertainment in Video'. The film plays in HD 1080p and Anamorphic Widescreen 16:9. The 5.1 DTS HDMA French language soundtrack has beautifully clear, timely English subtitles. The visual and audio quality of this film is superb, with particularly good lighting.Over the years, there have been several good and excellent versions of this French classic, based on the 1844 book by the great French novelist and playwright, Alexandre Dumas. There was a silent version with Douglas Fairbanks in the title role, as long ago as 1921. There was a rather irreverent but extremely starry swashbuckler in 1973, with Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, and Charlton Heston as a simmering Cardinal Richelieu. Probably the most authentic take on it has been the BBC’s serialised version from 2014, ‘The Musketeers’, with Luke Pasqualino as D’Artagnan and Tom Burke as Athos. But now, the French, in the shape of Pathé, have made a version (the first in France in over half a century), divided into two films shot back to back: the second film (‘…:Milady’) will be released at the end of the year.What a triumph! This is everything that a historical drama should be. The director is Martin Bourboulon, whose father was an influential French film producer. Bourboulon is, as yet, not especially well-known beyond France, but one of his previous works (‘Eiffel’~ 2021) about the engineer Gustave Eiffel , was pretty successful domestically. But with this film however, he has surely launched a major career, because he totally nails this, in terms of the look, the plot, the fabulous set-piece action. This is a film which sets off a gallop, and rarely relents. A richly realised atmosphere of seething undercurrents and swirling conspiracies permeates the entire 121 minute running time.The film looks seriously good. Lamp-lit streets, misty forest, opulent royal apartments, are all beautifully filmed by cinematographer Nicolas Bolduc, all shadows, mud and flickering candle-light. And this is the France and England of 1625, not some glossy Hollywood construct. It oozes authenticity. Both this film and the sequel were shot entirely on location, in historical French venues, including the Louvre Palace and the historic centre of Troyes. The cast is uniformly strong. The producers did not make the mistake of casting some top international star in one of the major roles. Everyone is good, with a successful but not stratospheric career. This has provided balance to the production, because the film becomes about the story, not the star. Particularly effective is Vicky Krieps, born in Luxembourg, who is superb as the Queen, Anne of Austria. So too is veteran French actor Vincent Cassel: Cassel is well-known in TV roles as well as film, and he plays a tough, gritty, slightly world-weary Athos. His father, Jean-Pierre, had played Louis XIII in the 1973 film!The Dumas story is very well known, but Bourboulon and his writing team still manage to deliver a freshness and immediacy, and a delicious sense of peril, unpredictability, danger. If you enjoy your swash and buckle authentic and conveyed with panache, you will love this film. 5 dashing Stars.

I had wanted to see this when it came out, but sadly there was nowhere showing it for hundreds of miles around, so I preordered this Blu-ray and waited it out. The film itself was really good. It was lovely to finally see a musketeers film in French and it definitely lent authenticity. Given that this is a longer adaptation than most it had a bit of breathing room to do things other than the main plot we've seen in several other versions. The fight scenes were done in a very engaging and interesting way. There's one that we see almost from the queen's perspective that I thought was fascinating. A kind of closed doors, "what exactly is happening out there?" tension building sequence. The others are done in quite a realistic way, that involves you, lots of long takes, moving around the action, death taken in a more visceral "that was over quickly because the man just got stabbed in the heart" rather than the stylish effort at the art of fencing most swashbucklers go to make them exciting. This was almost "Saving Private Ryan" style but with swords and muskets. The acting was all top notch. I was excited to see Eva Green play Milady so I'm sure I'll enjoy the follow-up even more. As others have mentioned, the musketeers are a bit aged-up over what we normally see, but it extends to the other characters too. The king is a bit older than is typical too, for example, which changes his character somewhat. I actually prefered it. In closing, it's a good version of a film we've seen dozens of times. If you like them, you'll like this. My criticisms are reserved for the disc. There are no extras at all, but in the age of streaming that's sadly becoming the norm. Far more disappointing is the frankly not even up to minimum expectations approach to the subtitles. Blu-ray and DVD should NEVER have hardcoded subtitles, which this has, but the offence doesn't stop there. This is a region locked blu-ray produced for UK audiences meaning it will not even play in North America and yet the HARDCODED subtitles are written in American English i.e. full of spelling mistakes. The disc will play in Australasia and Africa but to my knowledge those countries all prefer the original spellings of English words too. That's unforgivably sloppy in my opinion. I also found it frustrating that, being hardcoded and this is more to clarify than anything, it is impossible to turn those subtitles off. What about people who actually speak French and don't want to be bothered? Ok, sure they could import a French disc, but they shouldn't have to. A film released on blu-ray in a foreign language should as a bare minimum contain subtitles in the original language (in this case French) and in the local language (British English). This disc has neither!

This film was never released theatrically in the US, as a matter of fact I couldn't find it on any streaming service for the US. I get it, subtitled films just aren't popular in the US and that is a shame. I waited and searched until it finally became available on Amazon (not in the US mind you). Got it, only to find out that it wouldn't play in my player. Ordered a player that could play it and was thoroughly pleased. This (IMHO) is the definitive version of The Three Musketeers.Eva Green is captivating in the role of Milady de Winter. Her performance is nothing short of brilliant, Cardinal de Richelieu almost feels like a moth drawn to a flame in her presence. I think that is actually the point though, here is a woman driven to succeed and confident that she will.Speaking of the Cardinal, he is portrayed in a subdued manner, lacking the maniacal grandiose flair of Tim Curry, the sinister pragmatism of Peter Capaldi, or the tremendous gravitas of Charlton Heston. I mean this not as a slight, I would guess a directorial choice made when gifted with Eva Green's Milady. The second movie is titled Milady after all and not Richelieu.Of the Musketeers for me Vincent Cassel stands out as Athos and I wish we would have seen more of him during this movie. He is a masterful actor, his portrayal of a weathered and tormented Athos strikes all of the right cords.Francois Civil as D'artagnan has the right amount of wide-eyed enthusiasm and swagger for the role.The movie has great pacing and never drags, surprising given it's runtime of 159 minutes.Highly recommend it, even if you don't like subtitles!

Enjoyed this film cast performance was good. to be honest I got it for Eva green 😍

All in French

I bought this three musketeers DVD and waited till it was mailed from Germany. Extremely disappointed and frustrated. It is not a NTSC DVD and does not play on my us player! Another waste of my money on Amazon.