The Three Musketeers

Director: Paul WS Anderson
Starring: Logan Lerman, Orlando Bloom, Milla Jovovich
Time Out rating:
Japanese title: Sanjushi: Ohi no Kubikazari to Da Vinci no Hikosen

Paul WS Anderson’s efficient digital re-working of Alexander Dumas’s tale of seventeenth-century heroism, romance and friendship is notable only for its introduction of Terry Gilliam-esque, airborne war machines based on designs by Leonardo da Vinci. However, while these flying galleons facilitate some eye-catching aerial battles, the rest of the swashbuckling action is strictly for groundlings.

Anderson’s acknowledged model was Richard Lester’s 1973 version, though he has opted to cast actors not stars. Logan Lerman and Orlando Bloom come across as neither. It is impossible to see how the insipid Lerman’s callow wannabe musketeer, D’Artagnan, could help restore the mojos of Matthew Macfadyen’s love-lorn Athos, Ray Stevenson’s larger-than-life Porthos and Luke Evans’s jaded Aramis. Bloom is cast against type as the dastardly Duke of Buckingham, but is acted off the screen by Milla Jovovich, whose Milady de Winter uses her feminine wiles and fighting skills to survive in a man’s world. Otherwise, it’s one for all and all for nowt.

The Three Musketeers opens nationwide on October 28