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Synopsis: In order to save their captain, two sailors put into the island of Elba to seek aid, inspite of the the forces keeping Napoleon Bonapart prisoner there. Napoleon takes a shine to young Edmond Dantes and entrusts him with a "personal" letter to transport to Marseilles. Dantes is has a life to envy. He's young, has a gorgeous fiancee who loves him, and he has just been given the command of his own ship. So blessed is he that his best friend, Fernand Mondego, conspires with Danglars, the first mate over whom Dantes has leapt to his his command, to take it all away from him. Mondego is a nobleman who is insanely jealous that Dantes, a commoner, should have a life he envies. He covets Dante's girl, too. Dantes's enemies denounce him to the prosecutor, Villefort, who discovers that the letter is treasonous. Dantes is an innocent dupe in all of this. In his conversation with Napoleon, the former emperor notes that "We are kings or we are pawns." Dantes is a pawn. Although Dantes is obviously innocent, Villefort has reasons to hush him up, and Dantes is thrown into the Chateau D'If, an oubliette that occupies an island off the coast. Dantes spends the next fifteen years of his life there. One day, there is a scratching from beneath his floor. Another prisoner has mistakenly tunnelled into Dante's cell (having gone the wrong direction). This is the Abbe Ferria, who is delighted to take Dantes under his wing. He teaches Dantes to read, teaches him mathematics and economics, and teaches him to fence. All the while, they tunnel toward freedom. All the while, Dantes nurses his dreams of revenge. One day, nearing the end of the tunnel, the tunnel collapses on Abbe Ferria. Dantes pulls him out, but it is too late. Ferria is done for. But before he dies, Ferria tells Dantes the location of a fabulous treasure. Ferria's death provides Dantes with an opportunity. He takes the old cleric's place inside the shroud and is thrown to freedom off the cliffs of the Chateau D'If. He then finds the treasure Ferria told him about on the island of Monte Cristo. He uses his good fortune to re-enter society as the mysterious "Count of Monte Cristo." With his wealth, he enters the lives of the enemies who consigned him to oblivion and, one by one, exacts his revenge....

Picking and Choosing: Several years ago, I discovered that the version of Alexandre Dumas's Count of Monte Cristo with which I was familiar is an abridgement. Not only is it an abridgement, but it is a significant abridgement, omitting well over half of Dumas's original. This peaked my interest, because the abridgement I had on my shelf is one of my favorite books. I never sought out the original until last fall, when I first got wind of this new movie version. There is an interesting dynamic at work in The Count of Monte Cristo: the engine of the story--the imprisonment and the systematic revenge, can be pared down to its barest bones and still work. The abridgement works because it throws out many of the wildly digressive offshoots of the plot while maintaining its focus on the essential story. Much the same is true of the movie adaptations, of which there are many, many (the earliest extant adaptation was filmed in 1912). Because the novel provides an embarrasment of riches from which to chose grand gestures, embellishments, and styling, the films based on the story are greatly varied and generally don't resemble one another in the details. So it is with this latest version. It doesn't much resemble any of the previous versions, but it remains faithful to the spirit of the story and occasionally to its particular instances, some of which haven't been seen by the audience before.

Transcending Expectations: The last several adaptations of Alexandre Dumas to hit American theaters have been, shall we say, underwhelming (Peter Hyams's The Musketeer is presumably the reason that The Count of Monte Cristo was delayed from last fall to January--the new film shouldn't have worried). As a result of this, and as a result of the general trend in movies these days, I entered the theater for this film with my now-standard muttering of the litany, "Please don't suck." Imagine my surprise when the film did not, in fact, suck. It wasn't bad. It wasn't bad at all. I couldn't have expected such a lean and efficient movie from Kevin Reynolds (director of the debacles, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Waterworld--apparently Kevin Costner was the fly in the ointment on those two films). The film had no flashy editing, no kung-fu (thank god), and relied on old fashion virtues like performance, setting, and story. Hell, this film is practically a throwback.

But, it's not perfect.

The Count of Monte Cristo has two very good lead peformances by Jim Caviezel and Guy Pearce. Caviezel makes the transition from naive dupe to demonic avenger seem natural and convincing. Guy Pearce seems to be evil for the sheer joy of being evil, a villian's villain. Basil Rathbone himself could hardly have improved upon Pearce's hissable bad guy in this film. Fortunately the film centers on these two performances, because the rest of the cast is merely adequate (although Luis Guzman's Sancho Panza-ish Jacobo provides servicable comic relief).

The opening sequence seems gratuitous, but it's forgivable. Given the fact that the film is going to spend a good deal of its first half inside the Chateau D'If, perhaps the filmmakers thought that they needed to open with an action sequence to whet the audience's appetite. Of course, lopping this unnecessary sequence off would shorten the film to a very tolerable hour and forty minutes, so it's excess after all. The film makes one serious gaffe in the escape sequence, too, that jolts the viewer out of the film--and it's a needless gaffe, too, which makes it stand out all the more glaringly (this involves the final disposition of Abbe Ferria's body, which is irrelevant to the action and creates a suspense sequence where one is not needed).

Fortunately for the film, the best stuff is at the end. Dante's reincarnation as the count is every bit as fascinating as the character one finds in Dumas. His best scenes have a whiff of brimstone to them, which is as it should be. And how can one fault a character whose idea of a grand entrance back into society by descending in a hot air balloon is so extravagantly baroque. Screenwriter Jay Wolpert was obviously paying attention in class when the subject of rising action was covered, because this film gets more involving as it goes. Better still, it doesn't overstay its welcome.