The good news is you need to know exactly nothing to get swept up by this 8000-pound entertainment juggernaut. The screenplay by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patelliere is that impressive. It plays more like an Excalibur-level fantasy than a historical drama. Things start with a bang (and a little different than the source material), with D’Artagnan (Francois Civil) arriving in Paris searching for the people who left him for dead. In the city, he runs into the titular musketeers — Athos (Vincent Cassel), Porthos (Pio Marmaï), and Aramis (Romain Duris) — and uncovers a conspiracy to throw France into chaos. The important thing is that the good guys are really bad, and the bad guys are, at their core, good, which is always irresistible. The twists and turns happen right on point to keep the lively meter cranked up to a wicked level. You don’t even get the feeling that you watched half a movie like with other two-part pictures, as all the crescendos you need are included. To motor in the bricks of intrigue is some high-action scene cement. Bourboulon uses these uninterrupted tracking shots for attacks that literally put you right in the line of fire. The results are like mainlining all the thrills you used to get from the great epics back in the day. In fact, The Three Musketeers – Part 1: D’Artagnan seems like the ideal cure for today’s tentpole malaise. Yes, you will have to read subtitles, but Bourboulon’s bag of tentpole tricks makes that popcorn butter shine brighter than it has in years.
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