The feel of the TV series on the big screen – The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan Review

Basic information:

• • Genre: historical, action, adventure

• • Duration: 2h 1min

• • Released: 2023

• • Age limit: 12 (surprisingly low)

The benefit of the hot meal I won from Finnkino’s Movie Game was about to expire, so I had to go to the movies. The time to go to the movie was as bad as possible in terms of my own taste in movies, because there was nothing on offer that would normally interest me. My wife and I decided to go see The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan as an experiment. Historical or classic movies and TV series are not the first on my watch list, so my main wish for the movie was not to fall asleep. Fortunately, that didn’t happen.

Story

I will not delve deeper into the historical situation in which the film takes place, or analyze too much the world of the musketeers. The basic plot of the movie is that D’Artagnan (he’s called Arto for the rest of the review to avoid typos) wants to join the Musketeers, who are prestigious soldiers in the French army. Arto’s father had been in the army, and the boy is following in his father’s footsteps. Everything doesn’t go well in many ways, but I don’t want to tell about these events in the light of spoilers. Well, as a result of the troubles, Arto gets to know the famous three musketeers. And from this a lot of events arise. And many, many different plot arcs.

The story is really fragmented in places. It occurred to me many times that I’m watching a TV series instead of a movie, because there are really many different plot branches in the story. Maybe the story would have even worked better as a series. A good example of this is the end of the movie. The story is rudely left unfinished, and the announcement of the sequel flashes on the screen. The ending is really unsatisfying, but at the same time you look forward to the sequel. So maybe the movie is doing something right?

The film has a relatively wide cast of characters, and to my surprise, the characters are written to be entertaining, and not boring and serious in the style of a historical movie. Arto is a sly, unnecessarily daring ladies’ man, there is a femme fatale villain, and even the Queen of France has a surprising amount of personality. Actually, there are no boring characters. The problem is more that some of the characters are really much more useless than others. In the TV series this would be understandable, in the movie it mostly feels strange. It may be that some of the characters will be more useful in the sequel, but in this part some were forgotten. Funny how some of these forgotten characters were the famous Musketeers.

Music

The music of the movie is really good. It’s grandiose, exciting, even sad. Really good music choices have been made for every situation. In the film, for example, for a few scenes there was a track which I would not have expected in a similar scene. And these song choices only enhanced the atmosphere of the scenes.

Viewing Experience

As I already stated, historical works are not to my liking. I was afraid that I would be bored to death, the movie was over 2 hours long. Fortunately, it turned out otherwise. It was a bit difficult to concentrate at some points, but this could be because I was just really tired on the day of the viewing. I have to admit it: I finally saw a historical film that wasn’t boring!

The movie was pleasant to watch. A lot of effort has been put into camera work. There are several scenes where I was really convinced, for example, of the angle choices and how the light was used. My eyes liked what they saw.

Summary

I thought the movie was good. It wasn’t perfect, because plot inconsistencies and TV series-likeness made the whole thing confusing. Some of the otherwise well-written characters were also forgotten. However, the film was a historical film and entertaining. The atmosphere was right in many places, and it was possible to emphasize it with music choices and camera work. This movie can be enjoyed by die-hard fans of the Musketeers as well as such dead ends who have never seen the classic.