The Count of Monte-Cristo Director: Alexandre de La Patellière, Matthieu Delaporte Starring: Pierre Niney, Bastien Bouillon, Anaïs Demoustier Genre: Très bon film d’action
Apparently, since 1912 there have been at least 11 movies and miniseries adaptations of The Count of Monte-Cristo, and the version just released here isn’t the best one. I admit that I haven’t watched any of the earlier versions, but you could argue that meant my enjoyment of the current film was genuine.
However, of more relevance is that my teenage boys enjoyed the film too. We don’t speak French, so reading three hours of subtitles during school holidays was going to be quite a challenge for them. What made it work was that there were very few deep and meaningful conversations and plenty of action scenes including man-on-man sword fighting, shooting scenes, extraordinary prison escapes, yelling and screaming.
The Count of Monte-Cristo films, miniseries and the original book are fictional, although my research (thank you online AI) indicated it’s based on true events which unsurprisingly are much more believable. Indeed, that’s very similar to the various Three Musketeers films of which there have been at least 11 produced since 1935 and for similar swashbuckling reasons generally are also very much worth watching even if they have subtitles (curiously though, most of them are in English).
So, I encourage you to see any of the Counts of Monte-Cristo with or without your children. Whoever watches is welcome to learn about early 19th-century France (sort of) or just sit back and be entertained.
Rating: 3 Counts of Musketeers
