Vapid ‘Musketeer’ has no place on big screen

In theaters

THE MUSKETEER. Directed by Peter Hyams. Written by Gene Quintano, based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas. Running time: 105 minutes. Rated PG-13.

The new Peter Hyams movie, “The Musketeer,” has no business on a movie screen. It should have been released solely for television, perhaps as a midsummer replacement for the fine programming on PAX, a late-night whimsy for The WB, or, more fitting, as an event movie for amateur night on public access.

With the exception of its headlining cast, there’s nothing about the film that suggests it was meant for the big screen. Gene Quintano’s vapid and endlessly chatty script, in particular, is the small-time pits, a “reimagination” that reduces Alexandre Dumas’ novel, “The Three Musketeers,” to such a base, simplistic form, it renders it obsolete.

If you believe the hype, the film is supposed to wed the action of Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” to 17th century swordplay. That’s its selling point – and, incidentally – its undoing.

In spite of the work of Chinese choreographer Xin-Xin Xiong (Tsui Hark’s “Time and Tide”), the film never offers anything as inspiring, thrilling or as heady as the flawless choreography Yuen Woo-Ping presented in “Crouching Tiger” and “The Matrix.”

There’s no soul to the action, no heart to the fight scenes. The film does end with a fun sequence that takes place upon seesawing ladders, but that scene comes too late – and on the back end of too many empty, pop-culture cliches.

Despite his logging two decades in the movie business, Hyams (“End of Days”) still hasn’t learned that action alone can’t make a bad movie good; it just makes it busy. Worse, he’s become so reliant on the boring trend of cutting movies to look like music videos, whatever energy his film could have had feels false, manufactured and nervous, a trick that won’t fool anyone.

Somehow, probably because of his willingness to cut a large paycheck, Hyams was able to snag a promising cast – Catherine Deneuve as the Queen of France, Stephen Rea as Cardinal Richelieu, Mena Suvari as the sluttish Francesca and Tim Roth as the one-eyed Febre – but somehow, probably because he has no talent, Hyams wastes them.

His focus is on Justin Chambers as D’Artagnan, but either because Hyams can’t direct or because Chambers can’t act, D’Artagnan becomes the film’s dullest blade, a moving clothesline with the charisma of a scarecrow who will make Musketeer fans long for the best films of the bunch, from the 1921 Douglas Fairbanks classic to Richard Lester’s hilarious 1974 and 1975 versions, “The Three Musketeers” and “The Four Musketeers.”

Grade: D-

On video and DVD

BLOW. Directed by Ted Demme. Written by David McKenna and Nick Cassavetes. Running time: 119 minutes. Rated R.

After Stephen Soderbergh’s “Traffic,” Ted Demme’s “Blow” comes off like a flamboyant cartoon, another film about glamorous people living it up and crashing hard in the not-so-glamorous world of drugs.

Based on real-life drug smuggler George Jung (Johnny Depp), a boring dope from Massachusetts who ruled the cocaine market in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s, the film is ultimately more about charisma than it is about truth, more about Depp’s smooth strut and tousled hair than it is about Jung’s fatal flaws – chiefly, his stupidity, desperation, ego and small-town greed.

Demme, who directed 1996’s “Beautiful Girls,” is still in search of a personal style; indeed, “Blow” wouldn’t have been possible without the inspiration of Martin Scorcese’s “Goodfellas” and “Casino.” Still, what kills the film is its sluggish pace, its struggle for an epic tone and Demme’s inability to make us take any of the action and the characters seriously.

With Penelope Cruz as Jung’s shrewish wife, Paul Reubens as a drug-dealing stylist, and Ray Liotta and Rachel Griffiths wholly unconvincing as Jung’s parents, the film is supposed to be about the ramifications of peddling illegal substances and the ugliness of substance abuse, but since it’s lacking in substance itself, it never makes a connection with the audience. The film is all broad strokes and gloss, a movie that asks us to feel sympathy for a man who made hundreds of millions off the destruction of others and the poisoning of inner cities.

For audiences to make that leap, it was up to Demme to paint George as a victim of something – his upbringing, the world, his ignorance. But Demme doesn’t. Instead, by the end of the film, Jung remains an enigma, a man who may have left his mark on the world, but who leaves no lasting impression here.

Grade: D+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays in Style, Thursdays in the scene, Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.