The Three Musketeers (1973)

Some stories and literature just translate well to the big screen. Plain and simple. What do you think is the piece of literature that has inspired the most film adaptations? Okay, as I write this I'm assuming the Bible, but I'm talking about author Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers. There have been one adaptation after another over the years, an estimated 200 for Dumas' career work. Well, that's add another review from that list, 1973's The Three Musketeers.

It's the 1620s in France, and a young, poor and idealistic Frenchman, D'Artagnan (Michael York) is on his way to Paris to become a Musketeer. Without the experience necessary, D'Artagnan is quickly turned down and turned away. In the span of a few hours, he manages to insult three different Musketeers, agreeing to duel with each of them at three different times back-to-back. When he meets them later, D'Artagnan ends up fighting at their sides, including Athos (Oliver Reed), Aramis (Richard Chamberlain) and Porthos (Frank Finlay), against the Cardinal's guards. While he's not officially a Musketeer, young D'Artagnan is welcomed by the friendly trio, especially when they are thrust into some intrigue between the French queen and an English lord while Cardinal Richelieu (Charlton Heston) seeks to gain more and more power over the inept French king.

Ready to get your mind blown? This movie was originally intended for.....The Beatles!!! Director Richard Lester had worked with the famous British rockers in Help! and A Hard Day's Night, but the Musketeers a la The Beatles never came to fruition. Instead, we get this entry, a solid action-packed story with a great cast and some funny physical humor that works surprisingly well. With a ton of attention to period detail, 'Musketeers' shot on location in Spain (a nice stand-in for France, kudos to cinematographer David Watkin) and features a fun, big, fast-paced score from composer Michel Legrand. It isn't the cleaned-up, glossy vision like the 1948 version or even the 1993 reboot. I can't speak for the the newest take on Dumas' iconic characters from 2011. Lester's version though? It seems to be the favorite of all the versions, so good that most of four hours of footage was shot, Lester deciding to make one film into two. Yeah, the cast was less than pleased. Paid for one film, turned into two. That's good business.

Go figure, the high point of this 1973 take is the Three Musketeers. I haven't seen much with Michael York in it other than the Austin Powers trilogy so it was cool to see him in a part like this. Playing D'Artagnan, he just goes for it, committing to bringing the almost hyper-active, goofy, idealistic young man to life. He also falls for the lovely Constance Bonacieux, played by Raquel Welch, and that's never a bad thing. York fits in well with Reed, Chamberlain and Finlay as the three established Musketeers who all come to respect young D'Artagnan, originally thinking of him as one of their own. If anything, the group is underused through much of the 105-minute movie. I wanted to see more of them. Of the three, I was most impressed with Oliver Reed as the fiery Athos, the unofficial leader of the trio. Reed defined on-screen intensity in the 1970s, and his Athos is just a cool character, waiting for an enemy to make his mistake and unleash an attack. Also look for Roy Kinnear as Panchet, D'Artagnan's hired servant who becomes an unofficial fifth member of the group.

If there's a weakness, it's that Dumas' novel just has so much going on. A ton of characters, a fast-moving story, it's a lot to handle in a movie that's 15 minutes short of 2-hours, and that's including a credit sequence. There's a ton of talent here, but it gets lost in the shuffle at times. Heston is underused as Cardinal Richelieu, the treacherous papal official looking to take over France, Faye Dunaway playing his gorgeous spy, Milady de Winter, and Christopher Lee as Rochefort as the head of the Cardinal's guards. As for the French royalty, look for Geraldine Chaplin and Jean Pierre Cassel. Rounding out the cast is Simon Ward as the Duke of Buckingham and Spike Milligan as Bonacieux, Constance's dimwitted husband.

But what are the Musketeers all about? Sword fighting. Lots of sword fighting. Master swordsman William Hobbs choreographed some great fight scenes that are big and all over the place with four and five swordsman on either side. The highlight is a great extended fight at a quiet countryside convent, a group of laundry women working away when the Musketeers arrive to fight a group of the Cardinal's guards. The action features some great physical gags, rope swings that don't quite reach where they're needed, trips and falls at will. Kinnear provides some good laughs too, always ready to hit some baddies over the head with a blunt instrument while the Musketeers duel away with their swords. Fun throughout.

Because it was decided post-production to turn one movie into two, the ending is just sorta there. A tad disjointed to say the least with not much resolved. I hope to check in with the follow-up soon. In the meantime, this one was pretty good. How can you pass up a movie where Roy Kinnear walks around dressed up as a polar bear who can juggle and then causes massive amounts of havoc? Or a catfight between Raquel Welch and Faye Dunaway. I submit that you CANNOT.

The Three Musketeers (1973): ***/****

Juggernaut

The formula for disaster movies is pretty simple. Put together an all-star list of celebrities and movie stars and basically start throwing all sorts of apocalyptic measures of death at them. Sounds fun, doesn't it? That formula is improved when these casts are in a place they can't escape; a building in The Towering Inferno, a plane in Airport (and its sequels and knock-offs), or a boat like The Poseidon Adventure or 1974's Juggernaut.

On board the ocean liner Brittanica, Captain Alex Brunel (Omar Sharif) is in charge of 1,200 passengers traveling from England to New York City. The ship is only a day or so removed from port when a message comes in. A terrorist identified only as Juggernaut has placed seven bombs on-board the ship. He's demanding a ransom of half a million pounds to be delivered by dawn the next morning. If he doesn't receive the money, the bombs will explode. Working against a clock, a bomb disposal team led by Lt. Commander Anthony Fallon (Richard Harris) and right hand man, Charlie Braddock (David Hemmings), are flown in to defuse the bombs. Can they disarm them in time?

My usual picture of disaster movies is chaotic throngs of nameless individuals running around like their hair is on fire, old people and children trampled underfoot. Then Gene Hackman or Paul Newman steps to the forefront and saves the day, calming the masses with one soothing speech. In a lot of ways then, director Richard Lester has created the anti-disaster movie. A somber falls over the ship when the news of the bomb is released, the passengers realizing they can do nothing but sit back and wait, and hope. There is an almost documentary-like feel to Juggernaut, and a general low-key feeling of high-tension situation. It isn't the chaos or violence that erupts, but that sense of doom and dread knowing death waits with the sunrise. A disaster movie doesn't have to be aggressive and in your face to be effective. It just has to hit you emotionally in some way, and it does here. How would you respond in this dire situation?

Maybe Juggernaut doesn't have the huge names other disaster movies do, but it's still a memorable cast listing. More on Harris and Hemmings later, but let's start with Mr. Sharif, calmly cool as the Britannic's captain. He's given little to do other than try and stay calm, but because it is Omar Sharif it is at least watchable in its ho-hum ways. Anthony Hopkins plays Superintendent McCleod, a police officer leading the investigation to find the bomber back in England, also working with some extra motivation, his wife (Caroline Mortimer) and kids are on board. Ian Holm is Porter, the Britannic's company owner trying to fix the situation as best as possible. Shirley Knight plays a single woman who hooks up with Sharif's captain, trying to figure the man out. Roy Kinnear and Jack Watson play two members of the crew while Clifton James has a good part as an American politician with a unique outlook on the situation.

With a story that focuses on the horrific situation more than the personal aspect of the characters, something has got to keep you interested at that individual, person-to-person level. For me, that part came through with Harris and Hemmings as the leaders of the bomb squad. An early introduction shows them disarming a bomb in a London museum only to be called away to another rescue mission. We learn little about them other than Harris' Fallon has yet to meet a bomb he can't defuse, but because of the horrifying aspects of their job, it becomes personal. They live on a day-to-day basis, surviving one day at a time because honestly, they have no idea when their end will come. Harris is a scene stealer and the best thing going for Juggernaut, confident, cocky and ready with a joke because that's the only way he knows how to cope. His brotherly relationship with Hemmings is spot-on, a friendship that could only be a product of years of working together in this death-defying situation.

As mentioned before, what sets Juggernaut apart from so many other still entertaining movies is the bomb aspect. Much of the second half of the movie is spent with Harris, Hemmings and their team sitting in front of these seven bombs placed in oil drums that will explode if moved even a little. Harris' Fallon goes first, experimenting to see what will work, his team following suit. If something goes wrong (i.e. the bomb explodes), the team picks up where he left off. Tension doesn't begin to describe these scenes. The camera is right there on the ground with them in the dark passageways of this immense ocean liner. That documentary feel gives you the sensation of being there with them. The clock keeps ticking down, and what do you think happens? It's a cliche, but a good one. A blue wire and a red wire. Which one do you cut?

Is it possible for a disaster movie to be low-key and still be effective? Juggernaut proves that it can. Not remembered with some of the classic disaster flicks, but it is a good one nonetheless. Good cast, unique twist on a familiar formula, and tension and adrenaline to spare. Well worth checking out.

Juggernaut <---trailer (1974): ***/****

How I Won the War

Spoofs are almost a necessary evils of movies being successful in theaters.  Disaster, slashers, ridiculous action, sex comedies, they're all ripe for the picking.  But what about war movies?  There's two ways you can go.  Dark, cynical movies that barely even register as a spoof like Catch-22, basically a blueprint of how to make an anti-war movie.  Then there's the out and out ridiculous look at war, like Hot Shots.  So how about that middle ground in between?  I'll say it's not a good spot to start a movie, and because of the choice to have a story somewhere in between, 1967's How I Won the War is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

If a director is going to make anti-war movie, more power to you, but pick what kind of anti-war movie you're going to make.  Don't bounce back and forth in tone between jovial and laughing to dark and serious.  Director Richard Lester chooses to bounce back and forth, unfortunately for him and for us as viewers.  There are moments with lots of potential and some great film-making techniques, but they're ruined by the movie's tone that relies on existential, slapstick, and subtle humor all at the same time.  It's the rare movie that I can't find something to recommend, but this was awful.  I physically wanted to hurt someone watching it, but instead watched most of it on fast-forward.  It was a good choice. This movie couldn't have ended soon enough.

Joining the army in 1939 as World War II begins, a young man named Goodbody (Michael Crawford) is deemed officer material and is given the rank of lieutenant.  He's placed in charge of a squad of misfit soldiers who hopefully will never see combat, but of course they do. It's not long before Lt. Goodbody and his men are part of the British forces sent to North Africa to fight the Germans.  But before they can even reach the beaches as part of an invasion force, they're assigned a dangerous but necessary mission.  Three days before the invasion, they will land in North Africa and travel behind enemy lines to build a...wait for it...cricket pitch. Can they get the job done, or will they all get killed in the process?

Just judging this flick as something visual to watch or look at, Lester clearly pulls out all the stops.  His story is non-linear, starting the movie in 1945 as the Allies fight their way across the Rhine River into Germany, then bounces back to 1939 when Goodbody meets his squad and follows their "adventures" in the war.  Then periodically, it jumps back to 1945 to show the lieutenant's interactions with the German officer who captured him. Lester also has all his characters address the camera in first person as if they're talking right to the viewer.  He uses stock footage spliced in with his footage, and then gets artsy with dead soldiers returning as statue-like individuals painted in bright colors tagging along with the survivors as silent partners.

All those filmmaking techniques are fine and dandy though in a war movie, but not one as schizophrenic as this one.  There's all this ridiculous humor followed by moments that are supposed to shock you with its violence.  Don't combine stock footage of dead soldiers with jovial images of a squad of British soldiers literally marching into German machine guns only to have the Germans stand up and surrender.  I know it's a movie, and maybe this wasn't the intention, but it felt very disrespectful to me of those soldiers who did give their lives.  Also, piece of advice, don't compare yourself to other movies.  Soundtrack cues from Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia were both used at different points.  Used for comic relief? Maybe, but all I could think was that I should be watching those GOOD movies instead of this slop.

My all-time favorite literary character is John Yossarrian, Joseph Heller's main character in Catch-22.  He's a perfect cookie cutter for how to do a lead character in an anti-war flick.  Brash, honest, fully sane (maybe), but just fed up with the situation he's in.  In 'Won the War,' none of that exists with Crawford's Goodbody.  I've rarely come across a main character more shrill, more obnoxious, just out out and annoying than this one.  From an upper class family, he has the mindset that war is fun, even heroic giving men a chance to prove their worth. He is oblivious to everything around him and has no clue that his men despise him. Goodbody continues to preach about the glory and honor of war, but all I could think was that he deserved to be shot by his own men.  In his squad look for Beatle John Lennon in his only non-Beatles role, Roy Kinnear, Lee Montague, and several other random actors that played parts that left little impression on me.

One scene -- yes, that's it -- actually made an impression on me, when Goodbody's squad is killed by a German tank column supported by infantry.  It's shot in a hazy fog and has the look of a dream gone bad. When ripped to pieces by German mortars, Lennon looks at the camera and confusedly states 'You knew this would happen.' Kinnear tries to talk to his German captor only to be bayoneted in the stomach. It's just a small snippet that shows Lester could have made a powerful anti-war movie. As a viewer, I felt nothing for these characters, but because it is shot so well in such a dark fashion, their deaths hit me like a punch to the gut. Watch it HERE starting at about the 4-minute mark and continuing into Part 11.

Writing about that one scene, I can't completely rip this movie.  That one scene is actually that good. I can't say it's the worst movie I've ever seen, but it's up there.  I wish Lester would have picked one route and gone with it.  It is nearly impossible to deliver an anti-war message with a tone and humor as broad as the one here.  War is insane, no one can disagree with that, but by making the soldiers lunatics, cowards, straight up idiots, you're ignoring and disrespecting the people who actually fought and weren't all those things.  How I Won the War is one of the strangest movies I've ever seen, and while I can't recommend it as a movie, it's something you just have to decide for yourself how good or bad it is.  Give it a try at Youtube.

How I Won the War <---trailer (1967): */****