Three Fighters

I have never been so motivated to write a negative film review before. This movie has, as far as I can see, no redeeming features whatsoever.

The plot is mediocre and unoriginal. The script is clichéd, unrealistic and uninspiring. It seems to be a low budget movie, but has a story with action sequences that need far better special effects, or less ambition. The acting seems terrible, but with that script and the low production values, anyone would have looked bad and I can't fault the actors for anything other than bad judgment for accepting the job.

One thing that stood out above all else for me was the poor quality of some of the action sequences. The (mercifully) short sword fight between two of the leading ladies was probably the worst fight I have ever seen on screen. For a director who has made a career as a stuntman and a fight choreographer, this is really puzzling. What happened? In one of the final scenes two supposedly expert fencers have a fight where they hack at each other with foils as if they're holding machetes. For a film that takes it's name from such a classic story of sword fighting excellence, this failure is an insult, and unforgivable.

I was warned before watching this that it was bad, so I had exceedingly low expectations. Even so, they were not met.

And unfortunately it's a modern treatment that is done very poorly. If it weren't for Heather Hemmens who is beautiful and adorable with a lot of charisma, Asylum's latest mock buster 3 Musketeers would have no redeeming qualities at all. The 2011 film of The Three Musketeers is no great shakes but even that was better than this, at least the film looked good and the characters of Athos, Richelieu and Rochefort were convincingly acted. That's more than can be said for 3 Musketeers, the movie looks very slipshod with choppy editing and camera work that is highly suggestive of somebody who had absolutely no idea of what technique to use, almost too much like a very distracting experiment. Hemmens also is the only convincing enough actor in the movie too, the villains of Alan Rachins and David Chokachi are far too camp to be believable(Rachins is just awful here), the Musketeers lack charisma and energy mostly, Xin Sarith Wuku acts much more convincingly with his fists than he does with his mouth, and talented martial arts/stunt men like Simon Rhee are wasted. The action sequences are very poorly shot, dull and verge on cheesy, often feeling like inserted footage from the worst of Steven Seagal fight scenes. Add to that cardboard clichés passing for characters, dialogue of mind-numbingly banality and stupidity- someone really could have done with a few days more to make everything seem more complete and less hurried- and a story that has no sense of originality, excitement or fun at all, and you have a movie that is badly misconceived and fails on nearly every level. 2/10, and that is only for Hemmens. Bethany Cox

This film by low-budget direct-to-DVD house The Asylum is a mixed bag of silly, comic book action, uneven visual effects and even more uneven acting. The end result is ultimately a fun, if not altogether satisfying, time waster.

It's not a straight mockbuster of any "Three Musketeers" movie in Asylum's usual "Transmorphers" kind of way. Except for the title and some character names from the Dumas novel, the movie better resembles a "Charlie's Angels" film, as its plot centers around a team of action heroes attempting to stop a conspiracy to incite World War III.

The team code-named "Musketeers" consists of, predictably, spies whose own code names are Athos, Porthos and Aramis. They're joined later by an exotic-looking female spy named D'Artagnan who claims to be a direct descendant of the real one. Their enemy: A guy code-named "The Cardinal" (natch) who for reasons unclear wants to start a global war by killing the president.

The actors in the Musketeer roles are not too bad and actually appear to be having some fun, which is rare for The Asylum. Arguably the two sorest points in most Asylum productions is that their preposterous, low-budget movies are presented dead seriously, and that their has-been actors like Greg Evigan seem mortified to be appearing in them.

Not so here, where martial artist XIN is so charismatic as Athos you'll hope to see him in a better kung fu movie, lovely Michele Boyd as Aramis is reminiscent of Meg Ryan circa "Innerspace," Keith Allan channels Jeff Goldblum as brainy Porthos who spouts '80s pop culture references like "The light is green, the trap is clean," and Heather Hemmens (of the CW's "Hellcats") actually makes you believe a Costa Rican hottie could be the direct descendant of a 17th Century French guard.

But again, as with most Asylum movies, other cast members are so bad you'll wonder who on the production team they must be related to/have paid off/had sexual relations with to land their roles. Alan Rachins is so flat-out awful as the Cardinal he comes off as someone's old college acting teacher given the part as a favor. He pulls down every scene he's in so badly the movie actually appears to freeze-frame every time he comes on screen. Where's Barry Bostwick when you need him? Digital effects by Tiny Juggernaut are typically bargain basement, but not so much that they ruin the show. This is, after all, comic book melodrama, so it's OK by me if the jet planes and rockets look a little cartoony.

It's mindless fun that's worth a look on Netflix or maybe picked up used for a couple of bucks. Paying any more for it would be a bigger crime than World War III.

Imagine taking the dialog from the balloons in a comic book and simply using it as a screenplay. Would it work? See this movie for an answer. The story of the 3 musketeers has been shoehorned into a paint-by-numbers spy/secret agent/commando story by assigning the names and some plot points of the original to the rather un-original characters and story of this deadly opus. I admit I didn't make it through the whole thing so I'll tell you what I saw before giving up in disgust. A crack team of "musketeers" has penetrated some major military installation in (I guess) China and is trashing their warlike computer which has been cleverly designed to resemble some high voltage switchgear. The location has been cleverly disguised as a factory or oil refinery or something with a lot of pipes. In the process our heroes kill the half dozen useless guards, blow up an airliner, a helicopter and a few other things. The computer whiz hacks an anti-aircraft gun with his tablet computer, poking the poor thing savagely with his index finger. A dozen jabs or so and he has logged onto Chinese wi-fi, cracked the firewall of the internet enabled gun, aimed it, fired it and blown up the enemy fighters, all with less keystrokes (finger pokes?) than it took YOU to get the movie to play! We never find out exactly why they caused all this havoc. Somehow they get back to safety where they regroup and meet up with the girl "musketeer" who is meditating in a brief two-piece swim suit, perhaps hoping to remember where she left the rest of her costume. The single sentence, comic book balloon style speech continues throughout this mayhem, branding all involved as 2-D cardboard totally disposable and boring characters. Even the sexy girl is uninteresting and dull.

At first I thought this would be a spoof of this type of story and looked forward to some entertaining gags. But no, this thing is apparently meant to be "for real" and we must suffer through the antics of two brainless lugs and one bimbo as they karate-chop their way through life.

This clunker has the appearance of a costly production, what with many 'splodin' things, flyovers of a big city, cgi space satellites and such, but it's still small enough to require the crew to post bogus favorable reviews, hoping to bolster the pathetic rating and maybe con a few credulous viewers into buying or renting this wretched dog! It's a stinker of the bottom tier! Avoid!

Not the typical 'Three Musketeers' tale, but a modern revision starring Hemmens as a federal agent who enlists the eponymous trio of notorious international spies when she discovers a sinister inside plot to assassinate PotUS.

Former LA Law star Rachins has little to do but snarl and make threats as the principal villain (until he's called upon to throw some heavy haymakers late in the film), whilst ex Baywatch body Chokachi also features as a military turncoat. Rounding off the marquee names is veteran TV and film actor Steven Williams in an all-too-brief cameo early in the film as a conspiracy theorist.

The multi-talented quartet have chemistry, and their comic-book skills are never substantially challenged by the typically inept opponents who bumble from one botched assassination attempt to the next like keystone cops. Boyd in particular is engaging as an emotionless female Aramis, supremely confident in her appearance and fighting skills, she has a brutal hand to hand encounter with her leather-clad equivalent Smith that ends comically.

But despite some good intentions, and an occasional chuckle, it's still amateur hour displaying very limited imagination or technical skill, unlikely to make it into most living rooms except by mistake when you consider it's title and proximity to the release of the bigger, better known Hollywood remake.