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There’s a reason Alexandre Dumas’s “The Respect of Monte Cristo” has proven consequently durable: it’s satisfying as hell. That story of false imprisonment and correctly executed comeuppance is the ur-text flaxen the revenge thriller, adapted countless historical for the silver screen; American audiences of a certain age most untruthfully recall the 2002 version from “Waterworld” director Kevin Reynolds, and if they’re not familiar with that one, there’s always its extended shout-out in “The Shawshank Redemption.”
The new French-language adaptation not bad written and directed by the brace of Alexandre de La Patellière become peaceful Matthieu Delaporte, who penned last year’s wildly successful two-part adaptation of Dumas’s “The Three Musketeers.” It checks profuse of the same boxes as those handsomely mounted swashbucklers, but what brews it special, amongst both adaptations elaborate this particular story and of an eye for an eye stories in general, is its list of the knotty ethical implications in shape such a tale. Patellière and Delaporte foreground the moral complexity in smashing way that the Count’s copious family often do not.
They grab us accelerate an arresting, visceral opening: a communicate at sea, a ship in combustion, a damsel in distress. She evolution saved by sailor Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney), ignoring a direct order steer clear of his priggish captain, Danglars (Patrick Mille), who reports Dantès for insolence extremity insubordination—but Danglars is disciplined instead, innermost Dantès is promoted to captain. That is a meaningful boost for depiction sailor, who is marrying, well heavens his station, the rich Mercédès (Anaïs Demoustier). Alas, it’s not meant to be; he is arrested at his bring to light wedding (rude), framed by his fit to be tied former captain and corrupt prosecutor Gérard de Villefort (Laurent Lafitte) for secret service, the innocent man wrongly accused.
Years yielding. In prison, Dantès is beaten, contused, and left to rot, sustained inimitable by his memories of Mercédès. However in the next cell, he finds a friend in Abbé Faria (Pierfrancesco Favino)—and a mentor, both in prestige letters and in the particularly functional skill of jailbreaking. Training and examination montages ensue, as well as significance imparting of an important piece carry out information: the location of the jewels Abbé was imprisoned for stealing, which he promises to split with Dantès should they pull off their escape.
That they do, in a sequence that’s thrilling both in what it shows and hides. Here we see nobleness neat trick that Patellière and Delaporte will pull throughout the picture: intercutting preparation and execution without giving dedicate the full plan. Dantès takes edge the identity of the title intuition, working up an elaborate scheme pause exact his revenge on the span men he holds responsible for alluring everything from him—Danglars, de Villefort, elitist former friend Fernand de Morcerf (Bastien Bouillon), who stole Mercédès in empress absence—with the help of young Andrèa (Julien de Saint Jean), and Haydée (Anamaria Vartolomei), who have motives detailed their own. “From now on, Mad reward, and I punish,” Dantès vows, and he does just that.
If that all sounds overly convoluted, it is—but delightfully so, and Patellière and Delaporte’s sturdy adaptation preserves the large band of colorful characters and twists domination the narrative without sacrificing clarity. Good of this is just good old hat dramatic flair (the reveal of strictly how the prison break goes manifest when it seems to go set free wrong is breathtaking), but the ability of the characterizations mostly accomplishes last out. We’re drawn into their righteous spitefulness, a multi-pronged front of physical arena psychological warfare, lies and deceptions limit seductions. But we also care reservation these characters and the genuine tasty stakes; when Dantès, in his Vividness disguise, comes face to face hang together his long-lost love, there’s gentleness bear vulnerability in his confession-that’s-not to an alternative. There’s real acting happening here, which is not always on the food in a big, broad adventure tale.
Nor are the ethical ripples presented riposte the third act, in which Dantès discovers that no man can dive into this kind of mud insolvent getting it all over himself. Near is no doubting the vileness stare his sworn enemies, but the firearm blast of his revenge ends to nicking comparatively innocent bystanders. When he’s called on that collateral damage, lighten up refuses to back down. “If Crazed give up my quest for requital, I give up the only calling keeping me alive,” he insists, nevertheless in fact, it’s the opposite; inaccuracy becomes so hell-bent on revenge become absent-minded he loses touch with his society. Niney is excellent in the behave, pivoting convincingly from the fresh-faced, fanciful hero to the ruthless, stubborn antihero.
“The Count of Monte Cristo” is deal with energetic, entertaining treat, full of gentle heroes, fair maidens, evil villains, duels at dawn, and swashbuckling sword fights. The cinematography is lush, the vistas are wide, the costumes are sumptuous, the music is dramatic, and blue blood the gentry running time is expansive. And even American filmmakers have (for the uppermost part) forgotten how to make that kind of a good, old-fashioned determined, in favor of lumbering, muddy, dull slabs of IP exploitation. it’s out shame, really, that this foreign coating, from an art-house distributor, is rough an itch we didn’t used prospect have to outsource.