The Musketeer

American action movies have become, by and large, boring. Their stars lack charisma, their direction lacks clarity and purpose, and their action lacks zest. Increasingly, American filmmakers are importing talent from Hong Kong in an effort to solve these problems: stars like Jet Li and Zhang Ziyi, directors like John Woo and Tsui Hark, and stunt coordinators like Yuen Wo-Ping and Xin-Xin Xiong. Xiong takes his turn at the action helm in the latest Alexandre Dumas adaptation, "The Musketeer," which has been billed as a retelling of the famous story "as you've never seen it before." The problem is that most American action movie fans have seen films with laughable scripts, atrocious acting, confused direction and (yes) boring action. We have seen these films far too many times.

It should be a rule that someone who wrote two Police Academy movies and then moved on to a film like "Sudden Death," which may be the worst film of Jean-Claude Van Damme's career (and you know that's bad), cannot have another screenplay produced. Unfortunately, there is no such rule, and Gene Quintano's writing achieves the new low you would expect from such a curriculum vitae. Quintano manages to sap all the verve and passion from Dumas and replace it with anachronistic catchphrases like "You're beautiful...Sorry, it just came out", "Something's gonna happen. I know it", and "So that's what this is really all about." To establish that the story takes place a long time ago, he has everyone say "wish" instead of "want," e.g., "I wish to explain." He also indulges himself in a lot of screenwriter cleverness, which is like regular cleverness except that it is not entertaining in any way, as when D'Artagnan says he learned his innovative fighting style "here and there" and an inkeeper retorts, "Perhaps there. Certainly not here." So amusing.

Amazingly, the cast manages to make these lines sound even worse than they read on the page. Part of this is due to the casual mix of French, English, German and American actors in this film, none of whom apparently gave any thought to the accents their fellow actors were using; the result is jarring, to say the least. Excellent actors, like Tim Roth as the assassin Febre and Stephen Rea as Cardinal Richelieu, are forced to wrestle with lines which no ordinary human could speak without laughing. (It must be noted that Catherine Deneuve - yes, Catherine Deneuve - has a ball as a queen who never looks more regal than when she is whomping ass in a bar or cheating at cards, but she is the exception.) Meanwhile, bad actors, such as Justin Chambers as the upstart fighting dude D'Artagnan and Mena Suvari as maid Francesca, get lots of lines which could be sort of entertaining if read exactly right. Unfortunately, they read them passionlessly, almost dourly, and often start reading them just before the other has finished the previous line in romantic scenes.

This last problem could be an editing error, which brings us to the contributions of director/cinematographer Peter Hyams. Hyams did direct "Sudden Death," for which he will rot in movie hell, but he also directed "The Relic" and "End of Days," which were stylish and haunting. In the latter two films, however, atmosphere was more important than action as such. Here he is called upon to depict swashbuckling as it's never before swashed or buckled, and he cannot do it. He seems to think of swordfights as good times to get reaction shots from bystanders, not realizing that we want instead to see the glint of cold steel from the violent clashing of deadly cutlery. He often shrouds his fights in mysterious fogs or clouds of dust, ensuring that all we can perceive are soundstage-added clashes of metal rather than actual cool swordplay. And the film in general has no forward impetus; it never achieves that certain frisson that makes an action movie involving.

No, not even in the huge set-piece fights. The mere fact that someone has directed fights in Hong Kong films does not mean that he is good at it, and Xiong shows no particular skill. There is exactly one fight which amounts to anything special, a fight between D'Artagnan, rappelling up the side of a tower to rescue the Queen, and a bunch of evil dudes rappelling down to kill D'Artagnan. This scene has a lightness and eerie stillness which elude Xiong in the big finale, a duel between Fabre and D'Artagnan involving a mess of ladders. This scene is stolen directly from a touchstone of Hong Kong action filmmaking known here as "Once Upon a Time in China," and it's not stolen especially well, making for a finale both artistically dishonest and disheartening.

The reason Hong Kong action films have been so successful in the past decade is not exactly that the people making them are especially skilled, although some certainly are. Rather, Hong Kong action films succeed because they are made with a certain brio which cannot be added via the process of market testing. Give our directors more freedom to follow their visions; give our scriptwriters more leeway to experiment and surprise us; give us Vin Diesel in a lot more movies, to up the charisma quotient. But don't just give us "Hong Kong style" tacked onto a bad film like a new air freshener hung in a Ford Pinto. Wherever it's from, crap is crap, and "The Musketeers" is definitely that.

OUR YOUNG PEOPLE ARE MORONS

Human beings actually clapped after seeing the preview screening of this film, which took place in the posteriorial comfort of Butt Heaven Theatres, otherwise known as General Cinema Mazza Gallerie. This clapping may have emanated from the preteenage females sitting directly in back of your intrepid movie reviewer, who once again made the mistake of not sitting in the press section. Apparently Justin Chambers is considered something of a "hottie" by those who also like 'NSync and the Boys from the "Backstreet" of Orlando. I frankly find it depressing that men like Chambers are considered attractive; he has no talent other than looking about 12, which would fit his demographic, and successfully standing upright for most of the film.

On the other hand, perhaps they were merely applauding David Arnold's musical score, which made effective stylistic references to swashbuckler films of old and generally achieved an ebullience and verve which eluded everyone else involved in any way in the rest of the film. "Let's go home and listen to that old Everest LP of Bernard Herrmann's score for 'North by Northwest'!" they may well have said. Probably not, though.

TOP FIVE THINGS THE NAME "MENA SUVARI" SOUNDS LIKE

5. Maya Subaru

4. Mia Suzuki

3. Mira Sorvino

2. Minnie Safari

1. LeeLee Sobieski

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