Alexandre de la Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte’s fanciful and rollicking adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo doesn’t reinvent the classic story, but it’s another shining example of how Alexandre Dumas’ story of deceit and the sticky nature of justice remains the gold standard for revenge thrillers. Although it has been directly adapted and liberally borrowed from hundreds of times since the birth of cinema, this large scale blockbuster adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo is a sweeping, crowd pleasing epic done right. There’s not much of anything new about it, but Patellière and Delaporte carry it off exceedingly well.
After rescuing a shipwrecked woman from drowning during a storm, brave French sailor Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney) finds himself up for a promotion, while his cowardly superior, Captain Danglars (Patrick Mille) is fired. Seeking brutal satisfaction (as he is oft wont to dote on about to anyone within earshot), Danglars concocts a plan designed to imprison Edmond for treason against the King of France. Danglars is assisted in his efforts by a corrupt prosecutor, Gerrard de Villefort (Laurent Lafitte), and Fernand de Morcef (Bastien Bouillon), Edmond’s best friend, who secretly covets Dantès’ fiancee, Mercédès Herrera (Anaïs Demoustier). Edmond is convicted and sent to an island prison, where he meets fellow inmate Abbé Faria (Pierfrancesco Favino), an older gentleman who is keen to teach the average everyday sailor everything he knows. Edmond and Faria work together on an escape plan, with the latter tipping his new friend off to a wealth of riches and treasures once belonging to the Knights Templar located on the secluded island of Monte Cristo. Edmond is able to escape and claim the treasure as his own, using a good portion of it to exact revenge on the trio of now well connected and respected betrayers that put him behind bars. With the help of two younger, but equally aggrieved accomplices (Anamaria Vartolomei, Julien De Saint Jean), Edmond returns as the mysterious, worldly, and ultra-wealthy Count of Monte Cristo, and immediately sets about inserting himself into the lives of his oppressors.
Those familiar with more faithful adaptations of Dumas’ serialized, post-Napoleonic Era set adventure know that it takes a while to get around to what audiences traditionally see as “the good stuff,” and with a three hour running time, this take on The Count of Monte Cristo certainly isn’t an exception. Like many retellings of this story, some of the plot points (especially Edmond’s newfound talents as a master of disguise) require some healthy suspension of disbelief, and the dialogue is as purposefully overwritten and poetic sounding as possible. There’s a major degree of familiarity to The Count of Monte Cristo, but when a story is this good to begin with and it comes across in such an opulent, lovingly told manner, it’s hard to find fault in any of this.
Writer-directors Patellière and Delaporte have some experience with this sort of massively budgeted effort that looks like no expenses were spared at any point in production – from sets, to costumes, to action sequences, and beyond. Patellière and Delaporte recently collaborated on the screenplays for the less artistically successful but massively popular (in France, anyway) two-part adaptation of Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. They show a true love for the classics, both of literature and cinema. The Count of Monte Cristo packs in much more of Dumas’ text and characters than many other adaptations of the same story have over the years, but it all moves at a pace that neither drags over the slow bits nor speeds up past things that aren’t as inherently kinetic or pulse racing. Patellière and Delaporte respect the balance between good storytelling craft and bombastic spectacle, making for a pleasing final result that neither confounds the audience with details, nor treats them like brainless slobs simply looking for not-so-cheap thrills.
Niney gives a commanding and layered leading performance as an aggrieved and justifiably angry person who gets twisted by his all consuming need for revenge, while Mille, Bouillon, and Lafitte make for deliciously sneering villains. There could be more for the women to do other than being objects to motivated and occasionally confound the men, but the female cast members inject a lot of power and grace into such a male dominated story. Stylistically, the only thing that comes up short is the lighting in some of the film’s darker sequences, but that’s a minor complaint when everything else is so eye catching and fluidly captured.
But this isn’t really the kind of movie that relies on the strength of its technical specifics to get across the finish line. The Count of Monte Cristo has to pack the appropriate emotional punch and leave the viewer with a visceral reaction. Patellière and Delaporte do that and then some. It’s an old school sort of popcorn movie, and it’s not hard to see why this was such a hit when it opened overseas back during the summer. The running time of The Count of Monte Cristo might be a lot for some to take in, and the story requires a fair bit of attention be paid, but outside of that, this will give adventure movie buffs something worthwhile.
The Count of Monte Cristo opens at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto, VIFF Centre in Vancouver, AMC The Americana and Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles, and AMC Empire 25 and Quad Cinema in New York City on Friday, December 20, 2024.
