Prepare yourself for an overly complicated review of The Three Musketeers (1993).  Then again, those of you who are familiar with my work here on The Legionnaire will be used to me waxing historical, theological, and philosophical.  I am getting you ready for an extra dose of these three modes of analysis.  Part of this has to do with today’s movie.  It is a story that hovers on the edge of near universal familiarity.  In addition to many films, so many that I had to identify the year of this production in the title, there are candy bars and direct references in other parts of culture to Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel about the swashbuckling seventeenth century France.  Such is the author’s contributions to Western culture that many will know the cliché “All for one, and one for all!” without knowing its source.  I am nearly as guilty as the next person about being uneducated about these things, though I do have my historical training to guide me.  Through all this, I have always been mainly confused by one thing: the title.  It speaks of three of the legendary personal guards to the kings of France, but the events center on really one, who is not initially part of that three, thus making four.  Following?  Good!  Let us proceed.

Before we get to that theoretical fourth, The Three Musketeers introduces the villain of the story, Cardinal Richelieu (Tim Curry).  He is the French Minister of State, but he has eyes on taking throne for himself.  To this end, he tasks his main henchman, Captain Rochefort (Michael Wincott), to disband the Musketeers.  This removes this pesky group of soldiers whose loyalty is first and foremost to protect the young King Louis XIII (Hugh O’Conor).  Though aggrieved, the blue uniformed Musketeers all obey except for Aramis (Charlie Sheen), Athos (Kiefer Sutherland), and Porthos (Oliver Platt). Cardinal Richelieu wants Captain Rochefort to find them before they can ruin his plans.  Meanwhile, we finally get to meet that title complicating character, D’Artagnan (Chris O’Donnell).  He is busy fighting a duel with Girard (Paul McGann), who is there to defend the honor of his sister.  Being the rogue in training that D’Artagnan is, his excuse for whatever it is that happened with Girard’s sister (this is Disney, so they do not get specific) is that she needed something by which to remember D’Artagnan.  The young man is not dying, but instead headed to Paris to join the Musketeers, just as his father did.  This is where he goes after humiliating Girard.  Outside of the city, he spots lady-in-waiting Constance (Julie Delpy).  Seeing the pace at which she is riding and the men following her, he assumes that she is in need of rescue.  Rather, they are her guards.  All the same, she is touched by his gallantry and they exchange names before departing. Once D’Artagnan gets to the city, he immediately goes to Musketeer headquarters, but finds it only inhabited by Athos.  They do not have a pleasant exchange, and a duel is arranged for later outside of the city.  D’Artagnan cannot seem to stay out of trouble, and in succession comes across Porthos and Aramis and becomes duty bound to meet each of them on the field of honor.  When D’Artagnan arrives at the prearranged location to cross swords with Athos, he finds Aramis and Porthos there, too.  It quickly becomes apparent that these are the men that D’Artgnan has been wanting to meet, though they tell him that he is too late to join their ranks.  The three ride away before Captain Rochefort and some of his men get there, and D’Artagnan is arrested.  While in custody, he overhears Cardinal Richelieu meeting with Milady de Winter (Rebecca De Mornay), one of the minister’s spies.  She is given the task of taking a treaty to the English, which Cardinal Richelieu intends to help position himself to overthrow the king.  D’Artagnan is found out in this endeavor, and his execution is ordered for the following day.  Before his head can be removed from the rest of his body, he is saved by the three he was supposed to duel.  Together, they make off in the Cardinal’s personal carriage.  D’Artagnan also gives them a new mission: to make it to Calais before the treaty can be taken to England.  Though they have to split up, they succeed in intercepting Milady de Winter, who had once been married to Athos.  She is captured by another person, who had been tracking her for murdering her second husband.  Before she can be executed, Athos begs for forgiveness for casting her aside, which led her to her shady life.  She is moved by the gesture, giving Athos Cardinal Richelieu’s plan to assassinate King Louis XIII before jumping to her death.  Without stopping to mourn, our four set out for Paris once more, riding through the countryside and spreading the word for any former Musketeers to assemble.  Once back in the capital, D’Artagnan is sent to stop the sniper (which is a silly notion in the seventeenth century, but again, this is Disney) while Aramis, Athos, and Porthos look to be the only ones there to stand up to Cardinal Richelieu’s machinations.  They are not alone, of course, because their comrades come to fight alongside.  It soon devolves into a battle with steel flashing all around.  As expected, it comes down to Captain Rochefort, who initially faces off with Athos before D’Artagnan’s approach.  It turns out that Captain Rochefort had killed D’Artagnan’s father, thus giving the young hero extra motivation.  Classic.  The other three go after Cardinal Richelieu, who is attempting to escape with King Louis XIII and Queen Anne (Gabrielle Anwar) as hostage.  It is Aramis, a former pupil of Cardinal Richelieu, who finishes off the upstart bishop.  The day saved, D’Artagnan is now free to join the newly reformed Musketeers.  And with a cry of “One for all, and all for one!” they go after Girard.

My description of The Three Musketeers is straight forward.  My thoughts on it are less easy.  Part of this has to do with Aramis, who seems to have almost become a priest, but still kind of acts like one?  He does some things to make it look like he could be a man of the cloth, and yet the first time we meet him he is sweet talking a married woman and is about to sleep with her.  Then there is Cardinal Richelieu.  Despite this being a work of fiction, he is somebody who actually existed.  It is because of Dumas’ work that history mainly remembers him as a tyrant, making him a perfect literary villain.  Between these two portrayals, the only thing I can come up with for how these characters are constructed is latent anti-Catholicism.  Particularly in recent decades, the Church is seldom portrayed in a positive light.  Somebody like Aramis shows you how the Faith’s strictures can be stretched or blatantly ignored.  Cardinal Richelieu represents the boogieman of Catholicism.  To be clear, historically speaking, he was an ambitious person.  He lived at a time when prelates often served ecclesiastical and political functions.  Looking at it from the benefit of hundreds of years of history, it is fair to say that this goes above and beyond what God calls the bishops and cardinals to do today, or even at that time.  There was corruption in the Church then, and there is corruption in the Church now.  However, that does not invalidate the Faith’s teachings.  Humans are fallen.  There is no getting around this fact.  What is remarkable to me is that Hollywood wants to continually show Catholicism as a morally bankrupt institution when it should be holding a mirror to itself.

Here is a fun fact about the villain of The Three Musketeers: he is credited with having invented the table knife.  At any rate, Cardinal Richelieu was a politician, probably before he was a holy man.  Did that make him treasonous?  No, and indeed France still credits the work he did as a statesman as being a part of the creation of the modern country.  This is all subtext for me, and now for you.  If you can ignore it, and I could not blame you, then you have a pretty decent, if corny, action flick.