Musketeers without fear and with reproach – Newspaper Kommersant No. 51 (7496) of 03/27/2023

At the box office – “The Three Musketeers” (The Three Musketeers) British Bill Thomas. A well-known Hollywood prop man turned director puzzled the audience by casting African-British Malachi Pullar-Lachman as D’Artagnan. Why did he do it, explains Mikhail Trofimenkov.

Alas, both supporters of ethnic quotas in the film industry and their opponents, as well as adherents of elementary logic, in the case of Bill Thomas’ Three Musketeers “have nothing to catch.” One can, of course, recall the practice of “blackexploitation” in American cinema in the 1960s and 1970s: then, ethnic versions of popular plots were filmed for the inhabitants of African-American ghettos, for example, “Blackula” instead of “Dracula”. But the comparison is lame. Now, if all the characters – from Louis XIII to Porthos – were racially homogeneous, it would be a different matter, it would be “in an adult way.”

And here, in addition to D’Artagnan, only the vague Bernage (Stanley Brown), a musketeer who betrayed his brotherhood and defected to the side of Cardinal Richelieu, sparkles with black skin. Brown, unlike Pullar-Lachman, is a prominent actor, the main Othello of the Irish theater. But surrounded by such an outstanding collection of acting mediocrity that Thomas managed to collect, this actor seems like a parody of himself. Moreover, Milady, who looks like a shabby gypsy from a commuter train, is played by Indian actress Priya Kalidas.

The director made the young Gascon, as Silvio Berlusconi would say, “very tanned” for no reason other than political. He was guided by the only reason. The same one according to which the ancient Greek commander Alcibiades cut off the tail of his beloved dog, which cost wild money. Alcibiades explained his act to his stunned friends: “Let the Athenians talk about a dog’s tail than they would say something worse about me.”

Thomas got his way. The audience and critics talk about the skin color of the protagonist, instead of saying “something worse” about the film. But nothing worse or better can be said about him. There is nothing to say about him at all. The Three Musketeers by Thomas is a meaningless craft, reminiscent of the “cooperative cinema” that flourished in our ruins of perestroika.

From the classic canvas of Alexandre Dumas in the film, the meeting of the Gascon with the one-eyed Rochefort (James Oliver Wheatley) and the acquaintance with the quiet wino Athos (Ben Freeman), the gigolo Aramis (Jake J. Megnani) and the bootlegger Porthos (David O’Mahoney) remained in the film. Thomas boldly deleted both Madame Bonacieux and Anne of Austria with her pendants from the script.

Such courage can only be welcomed: let the musketeers fight even with the Martians, even with the reptilians, if only the romantic, boyish excitement of the cloak and sword sparkled from the screen. Alas, the script fantasy and directing skills in the film are at the level of acting. The canonical intrigue is replaced by an inarticulate story about a conspiracy that Richelieu is plotting against the retarded Louis with an unknown purpose. For some reason, the all-powerful cardinal intends to kill the autocrat during the royal hunt, in order to then accuse Captain de Treville of the crime.

As a result, from all the “action” scenes, reminiscent of duplicates spoiled by clumsy stuntmen, only a powerful image of musketeers running around the Parisian forest without pants remains in the memory. Maybe Thomas’s film is a sophisticated revenge of the British on the French for all the historical grievances that have accumulated between neighbors since the Hundred Years War? It is impossible to explain the very fact of its existence otherwise.