Movie Reviews

THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO
- Subin Raj Tuladhar

Unfortunately, it's one of the most overblown and disappointing: a big, vacuous, sometimes exciting glamour-puss of a movie. Once again, Edmond Dantes seems just on the verge of well-deserved youthful triumph - newly appointed ship's captain and about to marry his loving Mercedes (Dagmara Dominczyk) - when his jealous rivals Fernand Mondego (Guy Pearce) and Danglars (Albie Woodington) secretly frame him as a Bonapartist spy, and the corrupt prosecutor De Villefort (James Frain) seals Edmond's fate to shield his own Bonapartist father (Freddie Jones).
Imprisoned for 14 years in the Chateau d'If, a kind of French Alcatraz, Edmond escapes with the aid of his wise prison mate, Abbe Faria (Richard Harris), who also educates him and points him toward a vast fortune buried on the isle of Monte Cristo: a treasure that will give Edmond all the loot he needs for his final furious campaign. One of the reasons Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo" has lasted so long and been filmed so many times is that it satisfies so well our fantasies about paying back our enemies. Reynolds does in this movie pretty much what he did to the Robin Hood myth in his 1991 "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves": strip the narrative down and then overdress and load it with contemporary parallels and steals from other movies. Wolpert turns Edmond and Mondego into boyhood chums and rivals who fall out, like Judah Ben-Hur and Messala. Meanwhile, James Frain plays Villefort as if it were a role for Robert Downey Jr., and Luis Guzman plays Monte Cristo's servant Jacopo as if it were a role for Cheech Marin; his Jacopo is a comic sidekick and ex-pirate buffoon.

Harris is trotted out as if the Abbe Faria were King Lear at the least. And, at the center of the movie, Caviezel doesn't suggest youthful idealism curdling into lust for vengeance, nor does he get the count's urbanity and bitter irony, his inexorable entrapment of his enemies. I'm surprised they didn't call this movie "The Count."

Directed by Kevin Reynolds; written by Jay Wolpert
MPAA rating: PG-13 (adventure violence/swordplay and some sensuality).
Edmond Dantes/The Count of Monte Cristo - Jim Caviezel
Fernand Mondego - Guy Pearce
Mercedes - Dagmara Dominczyk
Abbe Faria - Richard Harris
Jacopo - Luis Guzman
Villefort - James Frain
Dorleac - Michael Wincott