The Count of Monte Cristo

Jim Caviezel is adequate, no better, as the wronged "Edmond" who gets caught up in a Napoleonic conspiracy that sees him confined on a remote island prison from which no-one escapes alive. His situation seems hopeless, until he receives an unlikely visitor - the elderly Abbe Faria (Richard Harris), who has been trying to tunnel his way out but took a bit of a wrong turning! The two become firm friends, and his parting gifts to the younger man are the secrets of an immense treasure - and his bodybag - that might enable him to seek revenge on "Fernand" (Guy Pearce); "Villefort" (James Frain) and "Maurice" (Christophe Adams) whose machinations stole a great chunk of his life, and cost him the love of "Mercedes" (Dagmara Dominczyk). His vengeance is cleverly structured, he determines to allow each of these people to turn on each other - using their own greed and mistrust to destroy the other. Alexandre Dumas wrote a great story, with loads of intrigue - yet somehow this iteration doesn't really get going. Too much of the build up is abridged (or just not there at all) and that makes the rest of the story weaker and less engaging. The production is adequate, the costumes and look of the film are good, but the pace and performances are both about box office than about characterisations. I felt indifferent about all of them - even the naive young "Albert" (Henry Cavill) whose character is actually quite pivotal in the book, helping remind "Edmond" of the humanity he once had before incarceration. There are way better versions of this story - notably the Robert Donat one from 1934, and I'd recommend that instead, any day.

Well, it's not one quality... but I like to do a thumbs up or thumbs down approach. If the movie entertains a thumbs up, if it doesn't a thumbs down. Seems simpler than debating on a 4, a 5, a 6, whatever. This is also kind of why I want to be able to review individual actors, just so I can write a memo to Guy Peirce and tell him that he needs to stop doing period literary pieces and go back to making films that don't require ascots and puffs. And this brings me to the point in the review where I question why I know what the difference between an ascot and a puff are. Anyway, self-reflection aside, the problem is that it doesn't know if it wants to be a thrilling adventure novel that is best epitomized by the writings of Dumas in all his pulp adventure glory... or if the story lasted in popularity for a century or so too long and now has to be regarded as a drama and treated with all the seriousness of a mature literary classic. It teases with both and never settles on either. It kind of comes across that Wolpert, the writer, understood that Dumas was a pulp adventure writer but Reynolds, the director, thought Dumas was as serious as Dante. It makes you feel like you are sitting in two different worlds. It kind of feels like you are watching a movie that wants to be a fun adventure yarn about revenge and prison breaks but every time that beast tries to escaped, it's forced back into it's cage by directorial gods of pretentious pompery. This is the type of movie that you'd get if the director of "Taming of the Shrew" thought everything Shakespeare wrote was "Richard III"... it's unsettling how deadly serious it takes itself.