Take to the Air, Musketeers!

We recently discussed the work of Paul W.S. Anderson. He is a director known for two very specific things. One, he makes crappy movies that feel less like films that video game cutscenes stitched together. Two, he is married to Milla Jovovich and he really loves his wife. That is the primary reason why the man has made 16 films during the course of his career, and Jovovich has starred in nine of those works. The number is even higher when you consider that he’d made four films (including legitimate bangers like 1995’s Mortal Kombat and 1997’s Event Horizon) before meeting Jovovovich, and since then she’s been in nine of his 12 movies. She is his muse, his inspiration, the primary driving force for his career.

At least, one has to assume. He certainly liked putting her in sexy costumes and making her into an action star. That was the case for all the Resident EvilFirst released a Biohazard, the Resident Evil games, and eventually movies (awkwardly and clumsily) tell the stories of a world ravaged by zombies and the greedy corporate, Umbrella, seeking to profit from the mess. films, and there has been a certain Resident Evil-esque quality to everything he’s put together since those movies began. Alien vs. Predator was basically, “what if we put the heroine from Resident Evil into another puzzle box underground base, but this time it’s populated with xenomorphs instead of zombies.” Sure, Jovovich isn’t in that one, with the heroine of the film, Alexa Woods, played by actress Sanaa Lathan, but honestly if Jovovich had played the role it wouldn’t have felt any different.

You can see the same impulse in everything else he’s made. If there’s a female lead character, and she can look sexy and be a bad ass, then his instant impulse is to put Jovovich into the role. She plays an ass-kicking witch in In the Lost Lands. She plays an ass-kicking soldier in Monster Hunter. Had she been in Pompeii she likely would have been an ass-kicking volcano hunter or some shit. And then there’s The Three Musketeers, written by Alex Litvak and Andrew Davies and directed by Anderson, where Jovovich plays, naturally or unnaturally, an ass-kicking version of Milady. Why? Because that’s what Paul W.S. Anderson likes to see in his films, whether it makes any sense or not.

And let's be clear, none of what happens in The Three Musketeers really makes any sense. Aside from some very broad strokes of the film kind of, sort of aligning with the source material if you squint your eyes really tight, this film is essentially The Three Musketeers in name only. It’s about as much of a video game movie as you can get, except for the fact that The Three Musketeers have barely been in video games at all (outside some pretty awful, Swedish shovelware). Those of you looking for the best worst Musketeer video gaming adventures need look no further than this strange and stupid film.

D'Artagnan (Logan Lerman) is a brash young man, skilled in the ways of the sword with dreams of following in his father's footsteps and becoming a Musketeer. In his eyes, there is no greater calling than to defend France, and its King, as one of his royal guardsmen. Unfortunately for D'Artagnan his initial introductions to Paris go poorly. He gets into an altercation with the leader of Cardinal Richelieu’s guards, Rochefort (Mads Mikkelsen), which leaves D'Artagnan wounded and looking to settle the score. Then he gets into three duels in one day against three of the famed Musketeers: Athos (Matthew Macfadyen), Porthos (Ray Stevenson), and Aramis (Luke Evans), which would have gone poorly for the kid had their fight not been interrupted.

As it turns out, the Musketeers are no more. After Athos, Porthos, and Aramis failed to acquire specific blueprints from Leonardo da Vinci’s vault in Italy, the whole of the legion was disbanded. Of course, they failed in their mission because they were betrayed by their fourth, Athos’s lover Milady de Winter (Jovovich), when she drugged them and stole the blueprints to give to her new employer, the Duke of Buckingham (Orlando Bloom). Now, a year later, D'Artagnan has to convince the three to pick up their swords and fight for France again because the Queen has been framed for infidelity and if they don’t stop this scheme the crown of France could fall into the evil hands of Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz).

From the very first frame it’s clear that this is not your normal adaptation of The Three Musketeers. While some parts of the plot are the same – D'Artagnan getting into duels with all three Musketeers, the plot to expose the Queen for her infidelity (although here she’s not being unfaithful, she just gets framed for it) – but there’s so much about this movie that wanders far off the reservation that, if you changed some names and a couple of minor details, it wouldn’t be an adaptation of The Three Musketeers at all.

For starters, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis aren’t just kings guardsmen. Instead they’re spies, trained in infiltration and extraction. They play the game of intelligence and subterfuge, although they honestly play it poorly. It’s pretty clear that Anderson really liked the idea of making these men into Mission: ImpossibleIntroduced in 1966, the original Mission: Impossible featured a team of agents (with varying skills) heading out into the field to solve puzzle-box like cases on a weekly basis. This simple concept spawned a long-running series, a second series in the 1980s, and a hugely successful movie franchise starring Tom Cruise that continues today.-type figures and bent the script (which may or may not have originally been written this way) into a kind of spy film. It lets the director indulge his weird, action movie fantasies, putting his fetishes on full display.

Watching the film, I was surprised it started in Italy, with the men on a quest to steal documents from da Vinci’s secret vault. And then it’s revealed that the plans were to build an airship. Naturally, of course, that then leads to a battle at the climax between airships for the fate of France (and if you consider that a spoiler you had 14 years to see this movie before now). But before we get to that we have crosses and double-crosses, schemes and capers, and a whole lot of people doing really cool action just for the sake of looking, well, really cool.

None get this treatment more than Jovovich, of course. She gets to dance around in a number of skimpy outfits, especially when she plans and executes her heist to steal the Queen’s jewels so they can be placed in the care of Buckingham, all to frame them both for an illicit affair. So she has to sneak into the Queen’s vault, past a trap that comes straight out of a Resident Evil film, all while dressed in her lingerie. Again, this man really loves his wife and he enjoys putting her in skimpy outfits so he can show her off. His fetishes really are on full display here.

Outside of Anderson's desire to show off his wife, though, he also gets to indulge in his desires to direct live-action, video game cut-scenes. Most of this film is a loosely strung together series of scenes that play like moments from games. It’s quick bits of plot followed by extensive action. The men meet at a bar, and then have to have a rousing chase out of there. The men plot and scheme on a boat, and then immediately kick over to an elaborate heist at the Tower of London. Nothing really has to make sense, and in fact the film often countermands and retcons its own plot as it goes along just so it can work in another double-cross, another big reveal, another silly twist to up the action. All in service of Anderson’s vision.

But the thing is that it all kind of works. Don’t get me wrong, this is a bad movie. Its cinematography is not great, its action sequences are choppy, its CGI is sloppy, and the acting is cartoonish when it’s not just outright bad. And yet it all strings together in a film that, bad as it is, is enjoyably daffy all the same. It’s like watching a cartoon mixed with a video game, where nothing is real, nothing matters, and everything can be as unrealistic as possible because any sense of a grounded reality was thrown out in the opening sequence of the film. This is a blatantly stupid film, but it’s the kind of stupid that knows exactly what it is and revels in it. The film has a blast being as dumb and over-the-top as it can be, all in service of a good time.

And because of that it’s one of Anderson’s better movies. That’s a low bar, and The Three Musketeers just barely squeaks over it. Anderson has made some real stinkers over the years (In the Lost Lands being just one of the more recent bombs on his resume), but The Three Musketeers never gets that bad. It’s a stupid, silly movie that absolutely wouldn’t work if it were played straight, but Anderson, his cast, and his crew seem to have their tongue planted firmly in their cheeks with this one, and that helps to make it watchable. It becomes so silly that it somehow crosses the line twice and actually gets fun again.

I would never describe this film as good. But as far as watchable films I’d recommend for anyone looking to make jokes at the screen, laugh at the next ludicrous thing, and enjoy watching a fiasco with friends, it’s hard to go wrong with The Three Musketeers. It’s a bad film, but the good kind of bad that keeps you coming back for more.