When it was announced that Paul W.S. Anderson -- the auteur behind Resident Evil and AVP: Alien vs. Predator -- planned to direct a big screen reboot of The Three Musketeers in gloriously overused 3-D, you would have been forgiven for suffering a slight stroke. How does this seemingly terrible idea look now that a trailer for the October action film has been released?
Not nearly as terrible! OK, it is Friday -- and by definition that means things look better than they would on Tuesday -- but this trailer for The Three Musketeers points to a film that aspires to reach the same level of high-gloss junk that made both the original Pirates of the Caribbean and Sherlock Holmes so much fun. Somewhere, Jerry Bruckheimer is watching this and nodding along happily.
Part of that has to do with the impressive cast Anderson has managed to assemble amid the many explosions. (Yes, explosions in an Alexandre Dumas adaptation; just go with it.) Matthew Mcfadyen, Ray Stevenson and Luke Evans star as the titular musketeers (as Athos, Porthos and Aramis, respectively) -- and, hey, not bad! Toss in Logan Lerman as D'Artagnan, and you've got a movie led by four actors who most would argue should be more famous. (That Mcfadyen makes for a charming narrator is a bonus.)
Still, Musketeers will likely live and die by its villains, which is good since Christoph Waltz and Orlando Bloom appear to be engaged in some sort of scenery chewing competitive eating contest: Waltz in his dapper Cardinal Richlieu wig; Bloom with the Captain Jack eyeliner, slinking around like a vintage Gary Oldman. It's like a double order of ham!
The only problem here? The October release date. This one screams late August escape to movie theater air conditioning.
VERDICT: Sold.
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