“A strange thing happened at this summer’s Cannes film festival,” said Kevin Maher in The Times. While all eyes were glued to the big Hollywood offerings, the real attraction turned out to be this “indecently spectacular” film – a French adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s 19th-century adventure novel that cost £35m but “looks like a $200m Tinseltown barnstormer”.
Made by the team that brought us the recent hit adaptation of “The Three Musketeers”, it stars Pierre Niney as Edmond Dantès, the young sailor who’s falsely accused of treachery, and locked up in a grim island prison. Years later, he escapes, finds some hidden treasure and – as the rich and powerful Count of Monte Cristo – seeks vengeance on the friends who betrayed him. The makers of the film were “smart and confident enough” to amplify the “obvious superhero echoes” of Edmond’s transformation into the suave, swashbuckling Count, but have cleverly avoided making the chief baddie “a cartoon villain”.
The result is “a fast-moving, good-looking gallop of ‘Mission: Impossible’-style mask play, languorous conniving in courtyards and occasional outbreaks of derring-do that chews up three hours without pausing for quail sandwiches”, said Phil Hoad in The Guardian.
Rousingly acted by an “all-round stellar ensemble”, it’s “a stunning, emotionally satisfying adventure tale”, said Peter Debruge in Variety: a “thrillingly modern adaptation” of “rock-solid source material”, and “a genuine triumph”. Had it been released in English a few decades ago, it would have been in the running “for a best picture Oscar”.