Review: The Three Musketeers (1993)

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Seen against the landscape of Hollywood’s resurgent interest in swashbucklers in the 1990s, it is clear that Walt Disney’s The Three Musketeers was meant to imitate many of the elements that made Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves such a box office success two years before in 1991. Base the movie on a famous adventure story set in the past (here, 17th-century France instead of medieval England). Have a handsome male star with longish hair (Kiefer Sutherland, in for Kevin Costner). Include an up-and-coming young actor in a key supporting role (Chris O'Donnell plays D'Artagnan, just as Christian Slater played Will Scarlett). Cast a skilled actor as the villain and let him try to upstage the leads (instead of Alan Rickman’s extravagantly sinister Sheriff of Nottingham, we get Tim Curry as Cardinal Richelieu, his lips creepily smiling and his eyes leering throughout the film). And just like Prince of Thieves, The Three Musketeers begins in torch-lit torture chambers and ends with a power ballad by Bryan Adams, this time accompanied by Rod Stewart and Sting to fill out the threesome singing “All for Love.”

By this point, enough of you readers are probably thinking, “Who cares if a mediocre movie imitates another mediocre movie?” Well, I don’t consider Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves a mediocre movie. It’s at least a cut above, and besides reigniting a genre, it has some legitimately great stuff, not least of all Rickman’s performance. (And Costner has always been underrated.) 

“But what about The Three Musketeers?” Imitation can be fine and useful, but too many of this movie’s imitations remain mechanical, too many of its familiar scenes seem prefabricated, and The Three Musketeers never becomes fully alive, even if it is solidly entertaining.

I’m no expert on the mammoth original novel by Alexandre Dumas, the kind of book most people have heard of and some are familiar with, although few have actually read from front to back. But from what I know, the screenplay by David Loughery captures the basic elements of the famous characters. The film economically gives D’Artagnan and each of the Three Musketeers his own introductory scene conveying the man’s main characteristics. For instance, we meet O’Donnell’s D’Artagnan in the midst of a duel with another man who accuses D’Artagnan of blemishing his sister’s honour. It’s clear that D’Artagnan wants to be a dashing swashbuckler, but he’s also youthful, reckless, and inexperienced. Sutherland’s Athos is a man of honour with a sad past, Charlie Sheen’s Aramis is a womanizer who wishes he was a priest, and Oliver Platt’s Porthos is the good-natured blowhard and joker of the bunch. 

In a clever and humorous narrative device, Loughery has the young D’Artagnan arrive in Paris and, on his first day, offend each of the Three Musketeers in turn, setting up three separate duels, one after the other, at the ruins outside of town. When the wicked Cardinal’s red guards show up there to try to capture the last of the Musketeers, who have refused to lay down their arms and leave the royal guard as the Cardinal ordered, D’Artagnan is drawn into their mission to protect the king and stop the Cardinal.

The script simply but fairly clearly conveys the political dynamics of France in the early 17th century. We learn that there has been political turmoil. We see that Richelieu is suppressing the Musketeers, the king’s bodyguard, in order to accrue more power to himself. We understand that Richelieu’s secret dealings with England, France’s historical enemy, are dastardly, even if a history buff like myself wants more about the secret treaty with Buckingham, or to learn about the earlier history of the Musketeers. In other words, this isn’t the most historically accurate and sophisticated work, but it’s good enough to convey something of the period and provide an interesting, comprehensible setting for an adventure movie. It also really helps that the film was shot on location in parts of Europe, including Vienna, which have intact Baroque architecture (unlike most of Paris)

The real locations and the impressive sets, props, and costumes create elaborate, realistic settings for the action sequences, which are entertaining and plentiful but never truly remarkable. There are all the chases on horseback, sword fights, leaps and bounds, and explosions we could want, but neither the choreography nor the control of the camera and space amaze. Director Stephen Herek, best known for also directing Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) as well as The Mighty Ducks (1992), is capable but not Steven Spielberg. He’s not even Martin Campbell, whose The Mask of Zorro (1998) boasts far more inventive and elegant sword fights and chases. Probably the best action scene in The Three Musketeers is the wagon chase after the Three rescue D’Artagnan from hanging, but the whole sequence remains a standard rescue. As far as swashbucklers go, the film lacks novelty.

Likewise, the film’s humour and charm are sometimes artificial. Charlie Sheen has never struck me as especially funny, and I don’t really buy him as either seductive or devout. And in retrospect, it’s easy to smile at the idea of Oliver Platt as a Musketeer, even if it’s clear he is miscast as an action hero. Sporting a headband more often than a feathered hat, Platt’s Porthos seems intended to add modern humour to the historical proceedings, but he comes across more like an attempt to inject Michelangelo (the Ninja Turtle) energy. His gizmos are misplaced, and his humorous monologue about “wenching” is carefully kept within Disney’s (at-the-time) strictly family-friendly framework.

This doesn’t mean, however, that The Three Musketeers doesn’t have a sensual edge. In comparison to the post-Marvel, post-MeToo blockbuster, the swashbucklers of the 90s and 2000s—we could draw the line all the way through the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy—all contain some sexual humour and tinges of eroticism, albeit to varying degrees. The Mask of Zorro certainly leans into the sex appeal of its leads, Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, more than The Three Musketeers does. Recall the scene where Zorro slices off Elena’s clothes piece by piece. Nevertheless, a lot of Herek’s camera shots are positioned here to accentuate the cleavage of Rebecca De Mornay’s seductress, Milady de Winter. In one scene, Tim Curry approaches the attractive secret agent with hands open, clearly about to grope her breasts, when he is interrupted. It’s the kind of visual joke—tasteless, funny, you choose—that, like the missionary leg fight between Maid Marian and the Sheriff of Nottingham in Prince of Thieves, you would just never get in mainstream entertainment today. 

What is the lasting impact of Disney’s The Three Musketeers? Not much, really. It’s notable for its cast of early 90s hot shots—Kiefer, Charlie Sheen—and for featuring one of the big Chris O’Donnell roles, before he was discarded (mid-90s, he was going to be the next big thing). If you remember it from back in the day, a rewatch won’t tarnish any happy memories, but it also remains a minor hit on the path from 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves to the end of the modern swashbuckler with Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End in 2007, after which digitally conceptualized and executed fantasy action would push out physical swords fights and chases. 

6 out of 10

The Three Musketeers (1993, USA/Austria)

Directed by Stephen Herek; screenplay by David Loughery, based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas; starring Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Chris O’Donnell, Oliver Platt, Tim Curry, and Rebecca De Mornay.

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