The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan

Forget the technicolor dreamcoats and the feathered hats of the 1993 Disney version. If your previous experience with Alexandre Dumas’s legendary swordsmen involves Charlie Sheen or Chris O’Donnell, you’re in for a gritty, mud-caked wake-up call. The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan arrived in 2023 not as a campy romp, but as a sweeping, prestige-action statement from France. It’s a film that looks like it was filmed inside a very expensive puddle, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.

I watched this while my cat was aggressively kneading my lap, and I’m pretty sure she timed her painful little claws to every sword clank on screen. It added a certain 4D physical element to the experience that I didn't ask for, but somehow it fit the movie’s tactile, "ouch-that-looks-real" energy.

Dirt Under the Fingernails

In an era where Hollywood seems to be drowning in "The Volume" and green-screen backgrounds that look like desktop wallpapers, director Martin Bourboulon (who previously gave us Eiffel) chose a different path. He decided to make a movie that actually feels like it exists in three dimensions. The sets are real French châteaus, the forests look damp enough to give you a cold, and the costumes look like they’ve been lived in, slept in, and bled in.

François Civil steps into the boots of D'Artagnan with a frantic, wide-eyed energy that works perfectly. He isn't a polished hero; he’s a scrappy kid from Gascony who looks like he hasn’t had a proper meal in weeks. When he arrives in Paris and manages to insult three different Musketeers in the span of ten minutes, you believe his stupidity because it’s fueled by such earnest, youthful adrenaline.

The film's approach to action is its true calling card. Bourboulon uses long, wandering takes during the skirmishes. Instead of the "shaky cam" that makes me feel like I’m having a stroke, the camera here glides through the chaos. You see a Musketeer parry a blade, shove a guy into a wall, and then the camera pivots to follow another character getting kicked through a table. It’s choreographed like a violent ballet, emphasizing the physical exhaustion of sword fighting. These guys aren't superheroes; by the end of a fight, they’re wheezing and covered in grime.

A French Avengers Assemble

The "Three" themselves are cast with a level of charisma that feels almost unfair. Vincent Cassel (from La Haine and Black Swan) plays Athos as a man whose soul is basically a burnt-out cigarette. He brings a heavy, melancholic weight to the group that anchors the more flamboyant elements. Then you have Romain Duris (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) as a dandy, religious, yet secretly scandalous Aramis, and Pio Marmaï as a bisexual, hedonistic Porthos who seems to be having the most fun of anyone on set.

However, the real scene-stealers are the ones operating from the shadows. Eva Green was born to play Milady de Winter. She prowls through the frames with a calculated, predatory grace that makes her feel ten times more dangerous than a man with a musket. And then there’s Louis Garrel as King Louis XIII. He plays the monarch with the energy of a man who just realized he left his oven on at home but is too socially awkward to leave the party. He’s funny, petulant, and strangely vulnerable, providing a necessary contrast to the machismo of the soldiers.

For contemporary audiences used to the MCU's "quippy" dialogue, this film offers a refreshing alternative. The stakes feel genuine because the political intrigue—Protestants vs. Catholics, France vs. England—is treated with the gravity of a historical thriller. It’s a "franchise" film (it’s the first of a two-part epic), but it doesn't feel like a cynical cash grab. It feels like a country reclaiming its own mythology with a budget large enough to finally do it justice.

The Survival of the Swashbuckler

It’s interesting to look at this film in the context of current cinema. While it was a massive hit in France, it slipped under the radar for many in the English-speaking world, likely due to the "one-inch-tall barrier" of subtitles that Bong Joon-ho famously mentioned. It’s a bit of a tragedy that it didn't get a wider theatrical push globally, because this is exactly the kind of mid-budget, high-craft spectacle that people claim doesn't exist anymore.

Turns out, the French spent about $70 million for the two-part production, which is a drop in the bucket for Disney but a mountain of cash for European cinema. You can see every cent on the screen. Apparently, the actors spent months training with some of the best fencers in France to ensure they could handle those long takes without needing a stunt double for every single frame. That commitment to the "real" is what makes the film pop in a sea of digital sludge.

Ultimately, this is a film that respects its audience’s intelligence while satisfying their lizard-brain desire to see people get poked with sharp sticks. It’s a gorgeous, moody, and surprisingly tense update to a story we’ve heard a hundred times. If you’re tired of capes and multiverses, do yourself a favor: find a big screen (or a very good TV), turn the subtitles on, and enjoy a movie that remembers how to make history look dangerous. Just watch out for the cat if you’re sitting on the couch.