Quick Movie Review: The Count Of Monte Cristo

5/10

I'm not sure what I was expecting here, really. The great classics have seen a very average set of movies based on them in the last thirty or so years - Man In The Iron Mask, Three Musketeers (with Keifer Sutherland and Chris O'Donnell!) etc etc. The best looking modern one (Terry Gilliam's ill fated The Man Who Killed Don Quixote) was never even made, though perhaps it will escape development hell eventually.

This is based on Alexandre Dumas' classic tale of betrayal and revenge.

A night where we didn't really have enough time to watch Seven Samurai and this turns up on TV, I decided to watch it and was pleasantly surprised - a fairly standard tale of repentance and vengeance, only rendered slightly silly that as in most good tales, all the French speak English with an English accent, except a woman who doesn't (because the actress is actually French) and all the Italians, Spanish and English. Who also speak English with an English accent but occasionally break into other languages to show they're foreign. Except the English who don't have the choice.

This problem may be due to the fact that directing this piece of period tosh is none other than "the" Kevin Reynolds who is responsible for Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, which has entered into legend as the ultimate in silly accents, geographical errors and historical misconceptions.

Dumb accent nonsense aside, I had a reasonably good time with the movie - scenes came and went without particular impact, a reasonably long "cameo" from the late great Richard Harris and a decent central performance from Jesus himself, Jim Caviezel.

Everybody else is neither here nor there really, Guy Pearce plays a possible Spaniard with occasional Aussie inflections with sneering gusto, but is far from convincing.

All in all a reasonable way to spend a couple of hours, but I wouldn't go out of my way to see it again.

A