After escaping wrongful imprisonment, Edmund Dantes (Pierre Niney) re-emerges as the mysterious Count, with a plan to destroy the men who took his life away.
When I was going through my love affair with swashbucklers last year, I was wondering if these movies would ever experience a renaissance.
Enter the Count.
Written and directed by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, this latest version of Alexandre Dumas’ tale has been a massive success overseas, both critically and commercially.
My experience with the story is a version for kids, and the 2002 American film directed by Kevin Costner’s full-time part-time friend Kevin Reynolds.
I liked the film - I did not love it.
The actors are well-cast.
Pierre Niney as Dantes handles the transition from facile youth to hardened mastermind, while all of the characters’ foes are gloriously contemptible:
Bastien Bouillon as deceitful friend Fernand, Patrick Mille as Dantes’ callous captain Danglars and my personal favourite Laurent Lafitte, who plays the craven prosecutor Gérard de Villefort.
Filled with great locations, the movie looks great. I was a little weary of the photography early on - it appeared to suffer from that drained quality that affects a lot of movies shot on digital, but that might have just been the lighting of the initial scenes.
The film is at its best in showing Dantes’ schemes come to fruition, as his foes destroy themselves, with a welcome dollop of dark humour.
The film is less powerful when it wants to highlight the ultimate hypocrisy of Dantes’ quest, and the cost on other peoples’ lives.
That nuance is interesting, and works for the film’s epic runtime, but it means the finale is more understated and not as cathartic.
This might be an issue of the film’s length. For the most part, I did not notice the film’s pacing - until we were intro eh final stretch.
I am starting to think this might be a personal thing - I had the same problem watching The Brutalist, and that had an intermission.
Still, it is worth a watch.
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