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I picked up an abridged copy of Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo one day when I was in grad school (tangent: that's probably what I miss the most about Ann Arbor, its really fabulous used bookstores), and one night when I was bored and peckish, I started reading it. It absolutely grabbed hold, and the next thing I knew, I was about three quarters of the way through, and the sun was peeking through my bedroom window. It's an absolutely classic revenge fantasy, with lots of derring-do and skullduggery and, as I recall, a little pinch of redemption thrown in at the end.
Alas, Dumas, despite many attempts, has not generally translated all that well to the big screen. I have quite fond memories of the exuberant energy of the 70's version of The Three Musketeers, with Michael York and Racquel Welch, but that was something of a high-water mark, and the rest, from Leonardo DiCaprio's The Man in the Iron Mask and Disney's pathetic take on the Musketeers, to last fall's execrable The Musketeer, have ranged from the sadly underwhelming to the undeniably terrible.
None of this bodes well for a new screen version of The Count of Monte Cristo, so against that backdrop of diminished expectations, I'm pleased to report that it comes off as, if not great cinema, at least entertaining and eminently watchable. One problem that any Monte Cristo adaptation faces at the outset is that the tale itself has so many twists and turns: betrayal, imprisonment, unlikely escape, sudden enrichment, revenge plot, etc. This version handles the many shifts fairly well, hitting the high points without losing too much narrative focus or coherence.
Guy Pearce chews the requisite amount of scenery as the right bastard who succumbs to poisonous envy and betrays his best friend. James Caviezel comes off quite well in the role of Edmond Dantes, our eponymous Count. He does a good job with wounded innocence, and his icy reserve isn't bad, either. The various settings are nice, the costumes are pretty; there's some decent swordplay to be had. Worth a look.
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