3 Musketeers

This could have been an interesting movie if they kept to the original premise: transfer the Dumas story into modern times. Unfortunately this was not attempted, it is just a typical spy story along the lines of "find out about a conspiracy and stop it by some computer hacking and shoot-outs", just that some characters are named Athos, Porthos and Aramis. The original idea of "The Three Musketeers" - innocent country-side lad D'Artagnan comes to the big city Paris and learns a lot from three experienced fighters - is not used. The D'Artagnan we get here is a clever agent who knows everything better and just lets the other three do the dirty work, like hand-to-hand combat and computer hacking. So if the script doesn't show any serious effort to use the ideas of the original, the technical side is sloppy as well, with many handheld shots and editing that appears to randomly jump from actor to actress. I give this very generous 3 out of 10 for a few funny moments (intended or not).

This film by low-budget direct-to-DVD house The Asylum is a mixed bag of silly, comic book action, uneven visual effects and even more uneven acting. The end result is ultimately a fun, if not altogether satisfying, time waster.

It's not a straight mockbuster of any "Three Musketeers" movie in Asylum's usual "Transmorphers" kind of way. Except for the title and some character names from the Dumas novel, the movie better resembles a "Charlie's Angels" film, as its plot centers around a team of action heroes attempting to stop a conspiracy to incite World War III.

The team code-named "Musketeers" consists of, predictably, spies whose own code names are Athos, Porthos and Aramis. They're joined later by an exotic-looking female spy named D'Artagnan who claims to be a direct descendant of the real one. Their enemy: A guy code-named "The Cardinal" (natch) who for reasons unclear wants to start a global war by killing the president.

The actors in the Musketeer roles are not too bad and actually appear to be having some fun, which is rare for The Asylum. Arguably the two sorest points in most Asylum productions is that their preposterous, low-budget movies are presented dead seriously, and that their has-been actors like Greg Evigan seem mortified to be appearing in them.

Not so here, where martial artist XIN is so charismatic as Athos you'll hope to see him in a better kung fu movie, lovely Michele Boyd as Aramis is reminiscent of Meg Ryan circa "Innerspace," Keith Allan channels Jeff Goldblum as brainy Porthos who spouts '80s pop culture references like "The light is green, the trap is clean," and Heather Hemmens (of the CW's "Hellcats") actually makes you believe a Costa Rican hottie could be the direct descendant of a 17th Century French guard.

But again, as with most Asylum movies, other cast members are so bad you'll wonder who on the production team they must be related to/have paid off/had sexual relations with to land their roles. Alan Rachins is so flat-out awful as the Cardinal he comes off as someone's old college acting teacher given the part as a favor. He pulls down every scene he's in so badly the movie actually appears to freeze-frame every time he comes on screen. Where's Barry Bostwick when you need him? Digital effects by Tiny Juggernaut are typically bargain basement, but not so much that they ruin the show. This is, after all, comic book melodrama, so it's OK by me if the jet planes and rockets look a little cartoony.

It's mindless fun that's worth a look on Netflix or maybe picked up used for a couple of bucks. Paying any more for it would be a bigger crime than World War III.

And unfortunately it's a modern treatment that is done very poorly. If it weren't for Heather Hemmens who is beautiful and adorable with a lot of charisma, Asylum's latest mock buster 3 Musketeers would have no redeeming qualities at all. The 2011 film of The Three Musketeers is no great shakes but even that was better than this, at least the film looked good and the characters of Athos, Richelieu and Rochefort were convincingly acted. That's more than can be said for 3 Musketeers, the movie looks very slipshod with choppy editing and camera work that is highly suggestive of somebody who had absolutely no idea of what technique to use, almost too much like a very distracting experiment. Hemmens also is the only convincing enough actor in the movie too, the villains of Alan Rachins and David Chokachi are far too camp to be believable(Rachins is just awful here), the Musketeers lack charisma and energy mostly, Xin Sarith Wuku acts much more convincingly with his fists than he does with his mouth, and talented martial arts/stunt men like Simon Rhee are wasted. The action sequences are very poorly shot, dull and verge on cheesy, often feeling like inserted footage from the worst of Steven Seagal fight scenes. Add to that cardboard clichés passing for characters, dialogue of mind-numbingly banality and stupidity- someone really could have done with a few days more to make everything seem more complete and less hurried- and a story that has no sense of originality, excitement or fun at all, and you have a movie that is badly misconceived and fails on nearly every level. 2/10, and that is only for Hemmens. Bethany Cox

This movie was somewhat amusing. If you don't expect intelligent dialogs, awesome special effects and top-class actors you can watch this movie. Switch-off your brain and watch.

The story is a typical good and bad thing without surprises. There are some would-be hackers with very unrealistic hacking methods, some would-be fighters, boring fighting scenes and a lot of low-level special effects at which I have to say that I have seen worse effects in other movies.

I really liked the charisma of Alexandra D'Artangan (Heather Hemmens) and Isaac Athos (Xin Sarith Wuku). But most of the actors are completely lacking in acting performance. The bad guy Treville the Cardinal (Alan Rachins) is an inflexible old guy and simply not credible as a bad guy from my opinion.

The camera work is awful. Too much switching (close, distant, close, distant...).

All things considered the involved parties tried hard too make a movie with good effects but unfortunately they didn't managed it.

When the movie started I thought it might be worth a look. But 10 minutes into it I realized this was a new new level of bad theater.

The premise was hokey and the director was in love with a style of cinematographic where the shot pops to a zoom in. It was constant and annoying.

The moment I know this was the worst movie I seen this year was when they turned on the oven of an electric stove to blow up a house. This was the typical attention to detail the cast and director gave this movie. I saw no less than 6 sequences that were ripped off from other movies. And terribly reproduced as well.

Save your money and the hour and a half of your lives and skip seeing this film, unless you want to see how not to film and action movie.