Not long after pictures first started moving, they started telling stories first spun on the page by French author Alexandre Dumas. There are reports of an 1898 adaptation of Dumas’ The Corsican Brothers by English filmmaker George Albert Smith, and nary a decade has passed since then without multiple incidences of Dumas’ work being brought to the screen. It’s not difficult to understand why – tales of adventure, intrigue, nobility, villainy, betrayal, revenge, romance, gallantry and what Dumas’ The Man in the Iron Mask breathlessly calls “magnificent valor” tend to draw a crowd in any era. Some things never really go out of style.
Having said that, Hollywood went extra crazy for Dumas at the beginning of the 1990s, with no less than four adaptations of the author’s best-known romp, The Three Musketeers, duelling it out in the development arena. A relatively youthful 1993 Disney take starring Chris O’Donnell, Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland and Oliver Platt as the titular heroes emerged victorious, although Peter Hyams’ somewhat misbegotten The Musketeer, a wuxia-tinged take on the tale, eventually made its way into cinemas early in the 2000s.
Because putting a six-shooter or a sword in the hand of an actor has long been a shortcut to helping establish stardom bona fides, other Dumas adaptations were in the works during this time – 1998’s The Man in the Iron Mask was part of Leonardo DiCaprio’s awkward phase between Titanic and Scorsese, and Disney was following up its Three Musketeers success with a version of one of Dumas’ most popular books, The Count of Monte Cristo, which was eventually released in January 2002.
The story of innocent, principled young sailor Edmond Dantes, betrayed by his friend, imprisoned in a hellish island jail, educated and liberated by a wily fellow convict and given the means to avenge himself by way of a fortune in lost treasure and a self-imposed title of nobility, Monte Cristo is no stranger to the screen – there have been literally dozens of adaptations over the years.
If the Internet Movie Database is to be believed, Arnold Schwarzenegger was ‘considered’ for the title role before wiser heads prevailed and the lead character was shopped to up-and-coming talent better suited to the part. Jude Law turned it down, as did Guy Pearce, who instead offered to play Dantes’ frenemy, the craven, cold-hearted Mondego.
It was a smart move on the Memento star’s part; while one has little doubt he could have imbued the hero with some interesting shadings, Pearce’s Mondego is, quite frankly, a prize shit: vain and entitled, and cursed with just enough self-awareness to realise his wealth and standing can’t compensate for the lack of character and soul ruining him from the inside out (in a nicely anti-vain touch, the older Mondego’s teeth are yellow and rotten).
To play Dantes, director Kevin Reynolds (returning to swashbuckling after Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves a decade earlier) chose Jim Caviezel, whose course to stardom kicked off a few years prior when Terrence Malick made his character the core of the filmmaker’s WWII epic The Thin Red Line.
If anyone is talking about Caviezel these days, it’s usually in association with his embrace and endorsement of conspiracy theories such as ‘adrenochroming’ (that is, the harvesting of adrenalin from children) or a damning podcast episode that cited multiple sources in outlining the actor’s eccentric behaviour on the set of his TV series Person of Interest, an unflattering portrait of unchecked ego and sheer delusion.
Caviezel’s acting career seems to have stalled out somewhat (although he will often mention that a sequel to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, in which the actor played Jesus, is definitely in the works), and revisiting Monte Cristo I found myself saddened about that – he’s quietly compelling in the lead, bringing a deliberate lack of complication and sophistication to his character that’s in keeping with screenwriter Jay Wolpert’s simplified, stripped-down adaptation of Dumas’ novel (in the lingo of modern pop-culture commentators, Caviezel understood the assignment).
He’s certainly stronger playing the good-hearted Dantes pre-betrayal than the revenge-driven Count, but he’s so effective conveying the character’s initial confusion, despair, and heartbreak in those early stages of the story that it’s not difficult getting the audience onside once he begins his campaign of revenge. And the elegantly saturnine affect and look Caviezel gives the Count is ideal, even if I was struck during my recent rewatch by the Count’s resemblance to Die Hard’s Harry Ellis.
Wolpert would hit paydirt the following year with a story credit on the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, a blockbuster that almost instantly made something like the modestly budgeted Count of Monte Cristo feel like a curio, a relic. Hollywood’s next major Dumas adaptation, Paul W.S. Anderson’s 2011 Three Musketeers, tossed in steampunk and speed-ramping to goose things up. But there’s a tactile quality to Monte Cristo, an affection and appreciation for its picturesque locations in Malta and Ireland, that makes it perfect viewing for the often miserable days and nights of wintry January; it’s a guided tour of idyllic parts of the world with blue seas and green fields.
And the movie itself delivers a pleasingly straightforward morality play/payback thriller by buffing and polishing the novel to a smooth finish, giving viewers a justified hero putting the scales back in balance by dispatching the bad guy, winning back his lost love and discovering the young man with whom he’d bonded (a baby-faced Henry Cavill in his first film role) is actually the son he never knew he had.
By the way, just in case you were worried about the Dumas estate, fear not. Adaptations of his work continue apace, with France deciding to show us all how it’s done by filming two Three Musketeers movies back-to-back – with a dream-team cast including the likes of Eva Green, Vincent Cassel, Vicky Krieps and Romain Duris – and releasing one at the beginning of 2023, the other at the end of the year. The trailer gives a strong indication of the project’s likely vigor and verve, with Dumas’ gift for gripping an audience showing no signs of letting up nearly two centuries on from the author’s heyday. You could even say this new Musketeers looks like… one for all. 
