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Almost 150 years before Andy Dufresne tunneled his way to freedom in Stephen King’s The Shawshank Redemption, Edmond Dantes scratched through the wall of his dungeon cell. For Dantes, it was more of a detour than a getaway. Yet, that gave him more time—years in fact—to contemplate his ultimate goal: stone-cold revenge. Obviously, this is Alexandre Dumas père’s classic novel (secretly co-written with Auguste Maquet), but this time around, the adaptation is reasonably (if not entirely) faithful to the book and appropriately French. As viewers would expect, Dantes is out for payback in filmmakers Matthieu Delaporte & Alexandre de La Patalliere’s The Count of Monte Cristo, which opens Friday in theaters.
During a sudden squall, young Dantes dives overboard to save his ship’s passenger, Angele. Awkwardly, she happens to be an agent of the deposed Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Of course, Dantes had no idea, but his brutal captain, Danglars, knows her secret and soon weaponizes it against him. After Morrell, the decent ship-owner fires Danglars, promoting Dantes in his place, the former captain denounces his rival as a Bonapartist agent.
Dantes’s supposed friend, the noble-born Fernand Mondego, the Count of Morcerf, promised to vouch for him, but instead, he seconds the indictment, out of jealous craving for Dantes’s fiancée, Mercedes Herrera. Gerard de Villefort, the hanging judge-like magistrate, recognizes Dantes’s innocence, but he willingly consigns the woeful sailor to the notorious Chateau d’If island prison (which was also used as a location in The French Connection) without trial, to keep his family connection to Angele a secret.
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For years, Dantes rots away, confined to a solitary chamber reminiscent of “The Pit” in The Dark Knight Rises, until Abbe Faria slowly claws through the dividing stone wall into his cell. Subsequently digging through Dantes’s external wall probably requires more time than the Abbe has left, but while they scrape and claw, Faria schools the younger man in languages and other useful worldly knowledge.
As a substantial bonus, he also reveals to Dante the location a cache of stolen treasure on the island of Monte Cristo. The fortune he will find there is so vast, he can buy a title and finance an elaborate plan to punish and humiliate Danglars, Mondego, and Villefort. Of course, will need help to execute his plan once he escapes from d’If.
Through providence, he finds Andrea, the illegitimate son born to Villefort and his mistress, the future Madame Danglars, who was surreptitiously saved after the magistrate buried him alive, shortly after his birth. The newly minted Count also assumes the guardianship of Haydee, the daughter of a former Pasha, who was sold into slavery after Mondego betrayed her father. While they share his desire for vengeance, they lack his all-consuming focus.
Delaporte and de La Patalierre, who previously wrote the recent hit two-film adaptation of The Three Musketeers (featuring Vincent Cassel and Eva Green), also assumed directorial duties for this nearly three-hour epic. They fiddle and fudge along the margins of the text quite a bit, but the major beats and broad strokes remain recognizably consistent with the source material. Perhaps the character of Andrea, who now inspires considerably more sympathy, represents their greatest departure from Dumas’s original novel, but it arguably works for the film.
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Frankly, casting Pierre Niney (whom many American cineastes might know as the lead in notable Yves Saint Laurent and Jacques Cousteau bio-pics) as Dantes might strike some swashbuckling fans as an unlikely choice. However, his cerebral intensity leads to a fiercer, more single-minded take on the vengeance-seeking Count. That somewhat breaks from the romantic tradition, but it makes sense given the dramatic context. We can believe this man spent the best years of his life seething in the Chateau d’If.
Fortunately, Laurent Lafitte, Bastien Boullion, and Patrick Mille make a trio of formidable, loathsome, and generally contemptible villains. Anaïs Demoustier is also wonderfully tragic as Mondego nee Herrara. She makes it palpably clear how much Dantes’s former fiancée also suffered due to their villainy.
Julien de Saint Jean broods believably hard as poor Andrea, while Pierfrancesco Favino makes a strong impression during his relatively brief appearance as the grizzled but dignified Abbe Faria. However, Anamaria Vartolomei and Vassili Schneider never quite sell the accidental romance that brews between the grievously wronged Haydee and Albert, the callow and shallow son of the Mondegos.
Regardless, Delaporte and de La Patalierre got their money’s worth, filming in some spectacular locations, fully recreating the both the high elegance and the lowly squalor of the 1830s. There is some nicely choreographed swordplay, but the hot-blooded emotions of resentment, wrath, and desire trump all other concerns. Altogether, it is quite a rip-roaring package. Highly recommended for fans of historical intrigue, The Count of Monte Cristo opens this Friday (12/20) in theaters.
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Grade: B+
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