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A veritable cascade of betrayal, daring escapes, sword fights and intricately staged deceptions, The Count of Monte Cristo is an old-fashioned, over-the-top swashbuckling film. At three hours long, it’s far too steeped in swashbuckling for its own good. But directors Alexandre de la Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte have a lot to tell. And Alexandre Dumas’s novel on the doorstep is a genre mix: what begins as an adventure becomes a romance before darkening into a revenge tragedy. All of post-Napoleonic life is here.
The year is 1815. Heroic sailor Edmond Dantès dives into stormy seas to rescue a mysterious woman who, unbeknownst to him, is carrying a letter from the recently deposed emperor. When this incriminating letter turns up in his own belongings – the dirty work of his evil superior, who is in cahoots with a corrupt prosecutor and Danglars (Patrick Mille), Dantès’s devious friend – he is arrested in the middle of his own wedding and thrown into captivity. Decades later, now in possession of enormous wealth and a new identity, Dantès returns to France to find and punish the vile men who have conspired against him.
As the Count, the indefatigable Pierre Niney cuts a noble but increasingly vampiric figure, whirling in slow motion around his crowded castle while Jérôme Rebotier’s brooding score veers from a menacing drone to the kind of full-on orchestral din popular in the historical romances of yesteryear. The camera zooms and pans like a dueling gentleman’s sword; outrageously over-the-top CGI delivers the dankest dungeons, most dangerous mountain trails and grandest palaces imaginable.
Nothing here is remotely believable, and that’s the beauty of it. Sit back and let yourself be carried away by Dumas’s 18 volumes of daring, told with an energy that is infectious, if not perfect. And after the flood, my friendsto the bar!
★★★★☆
In British cinemas from 30 August