three musketeers redux movie review
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7/29/2019 Three Musketeers Redux movie review
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Three Musketeers Redux(1973)
Though it’s been ten years ( Jesus!) since I reviewed this movie, which turns forty
this year, I felt compelled to take a look at it again because I just received in themail a copy of it on blu-ray, along with its companion The Four Musketeers. I hadaccepted that this film would never be upgraded to high definition, that I would beforever stuck with the lacking DVD transfers. I was shocked to learn that they hadbeen released, willing to shell out the $40 for the set, because while I might balk atthat price for some (many) movies, these are among my favorites and priceless tome. They could have cost a hundred for the pair and I probably still would havepaid it.
If we’re fortunate, and I am in this regard, we find movies all our lives that we areenamored of, that inspire us, that we simply love. But I am taken to believe thatthe movies we embrace in our youth stay with us much longer than those wediscover as adults; maybe with less competition for our youthful attention (certainlythe case when I was a child), we can incorporate films deeper into our hearts andpsyches. Or maybe it’s simply when we first encounter something that opens oureyes in certain ways, it tends to lodge itself in our memory banks.
This is the f ilm that taught me, though I didn’t know it until years later, the value of production design; what color can mean and signify in visual images, how it can beartfully used to convey information to the audience. It doesn’t hurt that the film hasa clever script, an amazing cast, a stirring soundtrack, and now, thanks to the blu-ray, finally a version worth watching. Though the disc tends toward the bright end alittle – almost all day-for-night shooting just looks like daylight – we can see details
we’ve never seen before, such as the rich textures in the clothing, the patterns inthe cardinal’s royal purple outfits, and the incredible detail on all costumes, but inparticular those of the musketeers and the Duke of Buckingham. We can also heara good deal better, and the little asides that people on the sidelines make are fullyaudible and usually very funny. Altogether this disc is a marked improvement inevery way over any other version, and worth the purchase price for any fan.
I know I’ve harped on this elsewhere, but this film – both of them, really—are sogood it makes no sense aside from a financial standpoint why you would ever try toremake them. While I know fans of the Kiefer Sutherland version from the 90s, theone done recently with Matthew Macfayden was execrable, and the kung-fu
Musketeer from a decade ago was an embarrassment. Dumas’ novel is a richtapestry of smart plotting and brilliant characterization, and while the movie isn’texactly terrible faithful to the details of the book, it captures the spirit of the workinimitably. Please, Hollywood, don’t try to make another version of this. It simplywon’t be as good as this one. While I watched it this go-around, I tried to think of whom I would cast in a new version, and while I came up with some ideas, really,you could never outdo Oliver Reed’s Athos or Charlton Heston’s Richelieu (his finestperformance, period). Why even try?
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I’m just glad I finally have a version worthy of the material that is wholly watchableinstead of the disappointing DVD release. This movie has been one of my favoritesfor forty years, and probably will always remain in my top ten movies ever made. If any film (other than The Seven Samurai ) deserves a blu-ray, then certainly it is this
one. I’m inordinately pleased to finally have a good copy of a movie that is so dearto me, and has meant so much to me for so long. Now if someone could justrelease Return of the Musketeers, which reunites this cast, I’d truly be in Heaven.
March 15, 2013