Martin Bourboulon's The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan, the first French language adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' novel since Bernard Borderie's two-part pass way back in 1961, is good at finding moments in this sprawling saga where attention can be focused around a single character as they stress their way through an overwhelming event. So, whilst being transported to the gallows for a crime he did not commit, the carriage transporting Vincent Cassel's Athos is attacked and its doors blown off. The cramped quarters of this sweat box, and the cracking pandemonium going on outside, contrast pleasantly: the audience feeling Athos' dithering desire to stay put (and therefore safe) in a location that, only moments earlier, they'd wished to see the musketeer flee from. As the title character, François Civil's D'Artagnan finds himself the subject in a couple of these sequences too: once when alone and under attack from an expert while camping out in the wilderness but also earlier, when cementing the bonds between this young upstart and the trio of Royal guards he will soon call brothers. Attacked by troops working for Cardinal Richelieu, on the pretext that the four men are duelling illegally, Bourboulon darts back-and-forth between each of the four swordfighters. The musketeers are brazen, stabbing at all-comers and firing their booming black powder pistols, while Civil's fresh recruit ducks and darts, less able to drown out the violent chaos erupting around him. It's a shame this empathetic framing isn't extended to Louis Garrel's King Louis XIII during an assassination attempt. Instead of sticking with this quivering monarch as he cringes under a condemned man's cloak, the film's perspective uncouples from this target to check in on the various skirmishes taking place around the room. Not unexciting then, but comparatively routine when held up against the stagings we have just seen.
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