IN "The Musketeer," the latest in a long line of film adaptations of the swashbuckling classic by Alexandre Dumas, it is not, I suspect, star Justin Chambers that audiences will remember. The one-time cologne model (by the way, how does one "model" cologne, exactly?) plays 17th-century hero D'Artagnan as a sort of sullen surfer who manages to come across as lightweight and intense at the same time.
Nor is it director Peter Hyams's much-touted collaboration with Hong Kong action specialist and wirework wizard Xin-Xin Xiong, who soups up a number of sword-fight set pieces: on a hurtling stagecoach, suspended from ropes on the side of a stone tower, and most impressively, in a huge warehouse filled with flipping wooden ladders.
Justin Chambers and Mena Suvari in "The Musketeer."
(Universal Pictures)
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It is Tim Roth. Fresh from his delirious turn as the manically evil chimp General Thade in Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes," Roth is equally incandescent here as a villain so villainous he makes the other villains wet their pants. Playing Febre, a kind of enforcer-hit man for the corrupt Cardinal Richelieu (Stephen Rea), the black-clad, eye-patched actor is so obviously having so good a time at being bad, whether he's slitting a colleague's throat or making not so idle threats to do so, that his sick pleasure is infectious. Febre may be a monster, a blight on the face of polite society (wait a minute, this is Paris; scratch the "polite" part), but every moment he's on screen is electric.
And "The Musketeer" sorely needs a man like him.
The roles of the three musketeers of Dumas's original title require both slapstick comedy and heroics, and the actors playing Aramis, Porthos and Athos (Brits Nick Moran and Steven Speirs and German Jan Gregor Kremp) are clearly up to the task. But there is a void at the center of the film left by Chambers, whose pretty-boy vacuousness does not suit his role as a smoldering, avenging angel. As a boy, D'Artagnan's parents were killed by Febre, and the now-grown swordsman has sworn vengeance (or, as Chambers would probably say, "payback").
Furthermore, the anti-matter that passes for chemistry between D'Artagnan and his lady-love, the chambermaid Francesca (wide-eyed nymphet Mena Suvari who, at 22, looks all of 15), is a child's idea of romantic love.
All of which is fine, given the fact that this "Musketeer" is clearly targeted for children. The sword wounds, bonks on the head and musket blasts may "kill" occasional extras, but there is nary a drop of blood shed amid all the violence. It's an unrealistic, "Power Rangers" kind of pugilism, where plentiful bad guys (plus a good guy or three) are unceremoniously offed (we know they're dead because they fall off their horses or do back flips in a puff of cannon smoke), but we don't ever have to think about what death actually means.
Then again, why should it mean anything? "The Musketeer" rollicks and rolls, thanks mainly to Roth's over-the-top depravity and Xiong's swingin', "Crouching Tiger"-style choreography.
THE MUSKETEER (PG-13, 105 minutes) – Contains an implied sexual encounter, a reference to gonad-removal and copious, but virtually bloodless, swordplay. Area theaters.
