The Three Musketeers (1993)…

Kiefer Sutherland’s Athos may have seemed grumpy most of the time (when he wasn’t “taking his drinking very seriously” as one of the other Musketeers informed D’Artagnan), but I still liked him.



I think this may have been one of the first roles I remember seeing Kiefer Sutherland play, and whenever I saw him in anything else, I always thought, “Hey, it’s Athos!”. I really liked how he played Athos’ devotion to the King. I totally believed he was putting the King’s safety first before anything else, and I always remember his, “Save the King!” line as they’re all fighting in a battle towards the end. He may have been the ‘typical’ character who starts out as having become disillusioned with what he once believed in, only to get back in the game/back into the groove of things at the end – but I really enjoyed his character and was so happy to see him eventually brought out of his ‘funk’. I also really bought his history with Rebecca De Mornay’s Milady D’Winter...but I’ll get to her in a bit.

I might be in the minority, but I actually liked Charlie Sheen’s Aramis.



I bought him “taking death seriously” as one of the Musketeers informed D’Artagnan (I always noticed that he was informed of the various Musketeers taking different things “seriously”...all except Porthos, of course, who didn’t really take much seriously, it seemed). Sheen was very ‘deadpan’ when he got the occasional humourous line and I remember that I was as relieved as Athos & Porthos were (yes, I was actually worried for him at the time) when it was revealed the bullet Aramis had been shot with in fact hit the cross he was wearing. His “There *is* a God.” was the perfect line for that reveal.



Oliver Platt was just plain FUN as Porthos, I thought.



He got most of the best lines/moments in the movie, including the bit where he basically did the Indiana Jones trick of the opponent who does lots of fancy moves, followed by the hero doing something quite basic to take out his opponent (though in this instance they added Porthos imitating his opponent’s fancy moves before he took him out easily).



I loved the whole bit with the Musketeers 'intending to resist' the guards.




But the funniest moment, for me, still remains the part where D’Artagnan tries to join the group as they’re having a discussion and Porthos nonchalantly shoves him away.



Platt was just so good with the comic timing, I thought, but he was also good in the more ‘serious’ moments too. Plus, he happened to have one of the more ‘darker’ scenes – when he faced that disfigured goon and impaled him on the spikes inside the iron maiden. This movie had some quite disturbing stuff for a Disney movie, I always thought.

Chris O’Donnell as D’Artagnan – Yes, he was a bit of a dork...but a likeable enough one.



Probably what helped me not dislike him too much was the fact that there someone else who was so much worse who had it out for him. In comparison, D’Artagnan wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t until a LONG time after seeing this movie that I discovered that who played the supremely annoying character of Girard was noneother than the eighth Doctor, Paul McGann. He certainly played the part of a guy you wanted to punch to a tee. His reaction at the end of the movie, when all the Musketeers chased him, was quite satisfying.



Tim Curry was just deliciously evil at Cardinal Richlieu, I thought.



He was the other character who got all the best lines in the movie – and with that voice of his, they were just so much fun (I always remember his shouted line of wanting the Musketeers dead or alive, then adding, “I prefer...dead.”). Though it wasn’t just his lines, but the looks he’d give too. He certainly perfected the ‘evil grin’. Also evil was Micahel Wincott as Rochefort. I felt he played the more ‘serious’ villain of the two well, and I found him to be a formidable foe for D’Artagnan to face (I also liked Porthos associating his name with ‘a smelly cheese’). His trick with the candles was pretty neat, I thought at the time. What I *really* liked was Constance helping D’Aartgnan out there at the end by tossing him the sword that was out of his reach so that he could finish Rochefort off. He got a memorable death/last line as he died.

Speaking of...this movie had no shortage of fine-looking ladies, with Julie Delpy as Constance.

   
  

Gabrielle Anwar as Queen Anne (I always remember her from this role and her one in the Michael J. Fox movie The Concierge - which my mum used to watch all the time).

 

And Rebecca De Mornay as Milady D’Winter.



On the subject of her, I thought De Mornay was just so entrancing in the role. I could never tell whether she was fully ‘bad’ or not.



I liked her interaction with pretty much all the characters, but especially Athos. Both actors sold this deep relationship their characters’ had once had, and what had happened which separated them. I was relieved that we got to hear what her name was from Athos (Sabine, I think he said) and that he rushed over to her before she was decapitated. I’m glad that they got to say their final words to each other, reached a sort of ‘understanding’, and that she took her fate into her own hands by jumping off the cliff.



I think the only actor I wasn’t fussed on in the movie was the one playing King Louis – but then, the character always comes across as rather annoying/insufferable in *any* version I've watched. I did think it was nice of them to let him have a ‘hero moment’ by being the one to punch the Cardinal’s lights out (and I kind of loved how impressed the Musketeers were with that).