There have been dozens of (mostly inadequate) attempts to adapt Alexandre Dumas’ behemoth payback yarn on film and TV, but it doesn’t stop people trying; this time, it’s the team behind the recent two-part Three Musketeers adaptation. Compared to the saturnine Gérard Depardieu in the well-regarded 1998 TV miniseries, lead actor Pierre Niney is a lightweight proposition as the count, playing his second major French icon after Yves Saint Laurent in 2014. But Niney’s physical slightness and poise lend something distinctive here, a hint of vulnerability underneath the multiple masks, a mortal psychological wound that can never be healed.
There’s no improving on Dumas’ timeless setup: young mariner Edmond Dantès (Niney) is imprisoned ad eternum in the Chateau d’If, Marseille’s own Devil’s Island, after being framed as a Bonapartist by shady prosecutor Villefort (Laurent Lafitte) and backstabbed by his pal Fernand (Bastien Bouillon), a rival for the hand of his wife-to-be Mercédès (Anaïs Demoustier). Bequeathed an impossible fortune and given a crash course in the gentlemanly arts by fellow inmate Abbé Faria (Pierfrancesco Favino), Dantès re-emerges in Parisian high society as the enigmatic aristocrat. Behind the swank orientalist mansion and unimpeachable manners is a simmering volcano of revenge. In other words: he’s French Batman.
