The Three Musketeers: Milady (12A)

D'Artagnan regains consciousness from a blow to the head at the fortified chateau of Le Comte de Chalais. His kidnapped sweetheart, the queen's seamstress and confidante Constance, is supposedly locked in the dungeon but Chalais's prisoner turns out to be Richelieu's seductive spy, Milady. On the spur of the moment, D'Artagnan forges an uneasy alliance with his enemy to escape the chateau and unite with the Musketeers to protect the throne.

LondonNet Film Review

The Three Musketeers: Milady (12A) Film Review from LondonNet

Director Martin Bourboulon’s enthusiastic rifle through pages of Alexandre Dumas’s novel saddled up in April with the expertly choreographed sword fights of The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan, introducing Francois Civil in the title role. Destructive elements with the French royal court appear to gain the upper hand in a breathlessly staged second chapter, which welcomes back mud-caked main cast including Eva Green as Milady de Winter, who miraculously survived her tumble off a cliff in the first film. She is a vampy delight and brandishes Milady’s sexuality as a weapon in deliciously heated scenes with Civil, extending the rough and tumble to bruising hand-to-hand combat in an inferno. You can feel the heat ripple off the screen…

Green snags some of the script’s most withering putdowns and one-liners like when Milady casually watches on horseback as D’Artagnan wrestles for his life with a blade-wielding assassin. “The ending was a bit drawn out,” she casually opines as he gasps for air. Technical virtuosity is undiminished with numerous thrilling sword fights, the storming of battlements and a death-defying leap into a moat (the camera follows close behind so we also experience gravity’s pull).

A handy montage summarises machinations of the opening salvo, which concluded with D’Artagnan (Civil) and Musketeer compatriots Athos (Vincent Cassel), Aramis (Romain Duris) and Porthos (Pio Marmai) thwarting an assassination attempt on King Louis XIII (Louis Garrel). The fingers of suspicion points to the Cardinal de Richelieu (Eric Ruf) as the mastermind. D’Artagnan regains consciousness from a blow to the head at the fortified chateau of Le Comte de Chalais (Patrick Mille), who is part of a conspiracy within the royal court to fan flames of civil war.

The young swordsman’s primary concern is locating his kidnapped sweetheart, the queen’s seamstress and confidante Constance (Lyna Khoudri). She is supposedly locked in the dungeon but Chalais’s prisoner turns out to be Richelieu’s seductive spy, Milady (Green). On the spur of the moment, D’Artagnan forges an uneasy alliance with his enemy to escape the chateau and unite with the Musketeers to protect the throne. Meanwhile, the King’s younger brother Gaston (Julien Frison) chomps at the bit to lead French troops into glorious battle.

The Three Musketeers: Milady is a rip-roaring romp that dovetails elegantly with the instalment dedicated to D’Artagnan. Screenwriters Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patelliere unravel tangled subplots from the first film, expanding Richelieu’s vice-like grip on affairs in Paris and Athos’s devotion to his orphaned son. Aramis and Porthos are largely surplus to requirements and operate as comic relief. Bourboulon’s directorial brio energises every clash of blades and flurry of fists with an emphasis on physical stunts and effects. After almost four hours combined in the company of Dumas’s conflicted characters, I am hungry for more.

– Sarah Lee