The Count of Monte Cristo Review
By Joe Lozito
The two-and-a-half "Monte"
Jim Caviezel has big, innocent eyes and an expression of naivete that completely fits Alexandre Dumas' would-be hero Edmond Dantes - at least for the first half of the story. When forced to hunt down and scheme against his enemies, Mr. Caviezel falls back on an odd stilted monotone which is a dead ringer for John Malcovich in "Dangerous Liasons" (and, of course, every other movie). Like Kevin Reynolds remake of "The Count of Monte Cristo", there is nothing terribly wrong with Mr. Caviezel's performance. However, there is also nothing terribly new or exciting.
Why Mr. Reynolds, not uncomfortable in period pieces - "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves", "Waterworld" - chose to remake a story that has been made and remade countless times before is unclear. As a director, Mr. Reynolds stays out of the way most of the time. There are the obligatory sweeping crane shots which say 'look at what our budget could buy," but other than that the film is fairly routine.
Guy Pierce, so (ironically) memorable in "Memento", plays the diabolical Fernand Mondego - the old friend who betrays Dantes - as a moustache-twirling dandy seemingly motivated solely by libido. When Dantes askes him why he has betrayed him, Mondego replies, "it's complicated". Actually, it's not. It has a lot to do with Polish Dagmara Dominczyk who plays Dantes' ill-fated (and ill-named) fiancée Mercedes. Though the writers might understand that there were more complex emotions at work in the novel, the film brings little of that to the screen.
What remains is a standard, period revenge drama which is has moments of adventure but carries little weight. The scenes of Dantes' jail-bound transformation into the Count under the tutelage of a wizened priest, played with welcome gusto by Richard Harris, offer some idea what makes this story so appealing. Mr. Harris has great fun as the tunnel-digging platitude-spouting codger, and some of that joy carries over to Luis Guzmán as Dantes' smuggler sidekick. When he says to Dantes "You want revenge? Fine! I'll go kill them … why is this a bad plan?" You almost want Dantes to go along with it, just to inject something new and unexpected into the film.
