The Return of the Musketeers (1989)
The Return of the Musketeers (1989), directed by Richard Lester.
quote
You see what comes of locking up your enemy like a criminal, instead of cutting his throat like a gentleman.
-- d'Artagnan
One year after publishing The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas published Twenty Years After, giving further adventures of his heroes later in life. Fifteen years after the splendid The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974), director Richard Lester, writer George MacDonald Fraser and the cast return to do a very loose adaptation of the second book.
This sequel does not have the richness or depth of the earlier films, but it still has fun moments and it is great to get the gang back together. I missed the odd cycle of serious and silly from the other films; here it is all pretty absurd. As before, a lot of wit comes from idle comments by bystanders.
For young blood they imported Americans: C. Thomas Howell -- Red Dawn (1984) -- and Kim Cattrall. Young people, New World? She is rather good at the action bits and looks particularly fetching with a sword in her hand. Last seen in Big Trouble in Little China (1986), Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and Split Second (1992).
Notes:
Charlton Heston wanted to return but Richelieu was dead 20 years after; we have a portrait of the wily Cardinal instead. Heston got to keep it.
Christopher Lee as Rochefort is the only transformed character. His failures 20 years earlier landed him in prison and he no longer has the old villainy.
And yet, a strength of this extended adventure epic by Dumas is that his heroes do grow older and wiser: still up for action but more likely to find a way around without fighting. Even when on opposite sides the old friends will find ways to save each other.
Dumas continues with the massive The Vicomte of Bragelonne set another 10 years later. The vicomte is Raoul, son of Athos. The final third is extracted as The Man in the Iron Mask and we follow each musketeer to his fate: at the end three dead, one left standing.
Production was blighted by the death of Roy Kinnear who played Planchet in each film. He died after falling from a horse during filming. You can see a stand-in used for a few scenes. Apart from a little music tribute Lester has not directed a film since. They were good friends and Kinnear appeared in many Lester films.
In Steven Soderbergh's book Getting Away With It, Lester says:
quote
Once we didn't have access to original footage from Three and Four Musketeers to slot into Return, then the whole concept of making Dumas's Twenty Years After was destroyed. It was a hole beneath the water line. [...] Ultimately, it seemed to me the only reason that [Salkind] didn't do it must have been spite.
Available on Blu-ray from Kino. Image quality in the bright scenes is fine.
The solemn commentary track says the film did not get a US theatrical release; it went straight to cable. Which may be why it is mostly unknown here.
