"They must see their whole world, everything they hold dear, ripped from them as it was ripped from me," Edmond seethes as he plunges into French society as the Count of Monte Cristo and cozies up to the enemies who no longer recognize him.ĭirector Kevin Reynolds, no stranger to the souping-up and dumbing-down of period classics (witness "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves"), makes a lot of mistakes in "Monte Cristo," not the least of which is fabricating a villain so cartoonishly evil that you can't help but wonder how Edmond got through their life-long friendship without recognizing the guy cannot be trusted.īut talented actor and good sport that he is, Pearce runs with this characterization, embodying Fernand's egomaniacal sense of superiority with supercilious sniffs and odious stares as he flagrantly cheats on his beautiful wife ( Dagmara Dominczyk) who had once been Edmond's fiancée. It is with the riches he discovers there that our hero fashions himself into a mysterious, fabulously wealthy and flamboyant count in order to begin his scrupulous, calculated and comprehensive campaign of revenge and ruin. Framed for treason and imprisoned in an remote island dungeon, once-naive Edmond is kept alive by his fantasies of retribution and by his camaraderie with a scholarly, elderly inmate (the charismatic Richard Harris) who tunnels his way into our hero's cell while trying to escape.Įducated and trained in swordplay by his companion over 13 years while the two men dig together toward their freedom, Dantes finally makes his escape not through their tunnel, but in a body bag meant for the old man.īefore he died, Edmond's mentor told him of a treasure hidden on the isle of Monte Cristo. Handsomely lanky Jim Caviezel ( "Frequency," "Angel Eyes") stars as Edmond Dantes, a young sailor from 19th Century Marseilles who is betrayed by his wealthy, politically connected best friend Fernand Mondego ( Guy Pearce, "Memento"). Yet even with these gross departures, this "Count" has such a flavorful, popcorn-literature air about it that at its worst it still recalls the best of Golden Era swashbuckler flicks. The hero has been acquitted of his less honorable acts, the fates of characters have been drastically altered (those that haven't been dropped completely, that is), and comic relief has been shoehorned into the story so crudely you can almost see the impatient studio suit tapping his foot on the set and saying, "Can't this be funnier?" Sure enough, even the central act of revenge that motivates this classic tale of obstinate, meticulous reprisal has been unduly rewritten to make for a cinematic and action-packed climax. The latest big screen adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo" has such a conspicuously clean Hollywood ending that, even though I've never read the book, I was suspicious and went online to bone up a little before writing this review.
0 kommentar(er)
