At a teeth-rattling gallop, this second Three Musketeers film follows immediately on from the first – being the two halves of the Alexandre Dumas original from screenwriters Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, directed by Martin Bourboulon. This second film effectively stars Eva Green as Milady de Winter, the slinky, sexy, smirking and sulphurous hitwoman working for Cardinal Richelieu. In the first film, Milady made a pretty fatal-looking clifftop jump, like Moriarty going over the Reichenbach Falls, but now she is back, and more ambiguous and seductive than ever.
Milady is involved in a fantastically complex plot to bring France into a war with perfidious Albion, in so doing exploiting a treacherous insurgency by the Huguenots; it’s all in the cause of toppling King Louis XIII (Louis Garrel). The chief plotter isn’t whom everyone considers the obvious candidate, although the audience can make a pretty shrewd guess at the ultimate culprit. Our four heroes are front and centre once again: D’Artagnan (François Civil), Athos (Vincent Cassel), Porthos (Pio Marmaï) and Aramis (Romain Duris), giving us some derring-do which involves infiltrating the schemers to discover what is going on. D’Artagnan is, as ever, on a romantic quest to rescue his amour, Constance Bonacieux (Lyna Khoudri) from abduction and imprisonments; there is also to be a sensational revelation concerning Athos, although on this point Cassel’s performance is a bit opaque, considering the emotional tumult that must surely be raging in his heart.
The fight scenes are as gonzo as the first, although there isn’t quite as much emphasis on horsemanship, and there are some excellent stunts, though I felt that the break between the films means that some of the momentum is lost, and re-establishing the investment in character and action is more of an ask. But it’s still a tremendous spectacle: all four of the musketeers are very attractive characters, particularly the noble and agonised Civil as D’Artagnan.
• The Three Musketeers: Milady is released on 15 December in UK and Irish cinemas.
