La Femme Musketeer

In this three-hour Hallmark presentation, Susie Amy stars as the title character, the daughter of D'Artagnan, played once again by Michael York. It's pretty cute to see him reprising his role from for the fourth time, and while Susie does tease him and call him "old man", he still has a twinkle in his eye and has enough spunk to spice up some romantic scenes with his wife, Susan Brown.

Similar to the original musketeer story where D'Artagnan sets up multiple duels in the afternoon, then ends up banding together with his challengers to fight off the cardinal's guards, Susie sets up a duel with musketeer Casper Zafer. Just as they start to fight, their identities are revealed. All four children of the original musketeers are reunited, ambushed by the cardinal's guards, and band together to defeat them again! While the younger musketeers are busy trying to uncover a plot by the evil cardinal, King Louis, played by Freddie Sayers, juggles his mistress, Clemency Burton-Hill and the political ramifications of marrying his betrothed, Kristina Krepela. Gérard Depardieu doesn't reprise his 1998 role as Porthos, but instead plays the chief bad guy, the cardinal! His cohort is Nastassja Kinski, but if you've seen any musketeer movies, you know that they're not the pair to root for.

Full of fun fight scenes, an interesting swashbuckling story, and a beautiful leading lady to look at for three hours, La Femme Musketeer is very entertaining. It's not too violent, since it's Hallmark, so you can watch it with the whole family and have a nice evening.

DLM warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not be your friend. Some of the fight scenes use a handheld camera and it will make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"

the costumes and sets were lavish, the actors were top-notch, but MAN, someone needs to tell that director to get his hands off the reins!

the entire thing was so carefully scripted and orchestrated it approached farce.

also, there were some serious ouchies: she does a flip off something-or-other in the middle of a sword fight and we clearly see her hat flip down to cover her face. of course, when she lands, the hat is perfectly placed and her hair is immaculate. pretty amazing, considering the thing wasn't pinned down and it was pretty big.

little things like that -- i found myself watching in a kind of morbid fascination as it veered from extremely good scenery and gorgeous costumes to unbelievably stupid plotting. example: there's a scene in which she makes a huge fuss over having to wear a dress. she spends the movie running, leaping, and generally doing the Errol Flynn in a musketeer's uniform. so what does she wear to accept her reward from a grateful king?

a massive, gigantic, elaborate, silver ball gown, of course.

A fun and loosely retelling based on famous Alexandre Dumas novel. This is a big production with luxurios scenarios , spectacular action , court intrigue and exciting duels . Being based on Alexandre Dumas' classic yarn of intrigue at the 17th century French court . Alexandre Dumas's source for his novel was a book by 19th-century writer Courtils Sandraz, which was purporting to be D'Artagnan's biography ; the Musketeers were actually real people, not fictional characters created by Dumas . For this filled with emotion recounting is adapted in the greatest splendor , the complete romance , the historical characters, the full novel by Alexandre Dumas though including important changes, in fact starring an allegedly daughter . It is packed with comedy , derring-do , intrigue , a love story , action , drama and moving fencing . An awesome casting and big-budgeted production shot in Croatia and location make for a fairly amusement swashbuckler. This is a luxurious recounting of the Dumas's novel with a fine cast headed by Susie Amis in a brave role as a young and handsome woman , a dashing, audacious swordswoman and a nimble athlete . D'Artagnan's daughter Valentine (Susie Amis) and the three sons of her father's three legendary musketeer comrades must team up to rescue a princess who's been kidnapped. Musketeers must defeat a beautiful double agent and the villainous Mazarino from seizing the French throne and engulfing Europe in war between the greatest nations: Spain and France. This delightful adaptation freely based on Alexandre Dumas classic novel deals with the youngster daughter of D'Artagnan (Michael York)and his three friends , the three two-fisted Musketeers , rollicking adventurers , fighting to live and living to love . All of them join in their objective to struggle against guards of Cardinal Mazarino (Gerard Depardieu) and to rescue the daughter of King Philip IV of Spain, Princess Maria-Theresa (Kristina Krepela), who is heading to Paris to marry the king Louis XIV (Freddie Sayers) and against the astute Lady Bolton (Nastassja Kinski, replacing Milady De Winter: Faye Dunaway), who is lovely as a jewel, deadly as a dagger the wickedest woman in all Christendom. All of them entangled in a web of treachery and intrigue . Furthermore , there is developed an intrigue between Luis XIV, Mazarino, Lady Bolton and Duke of Buckingham (Nicholas Rowe); and of course the nasty Mazarino , as evil as ever along with henchman, Villeroi (Marcus Jean Pirae). Then Lady Bolton is assigned a mission : to kill the Duke and seize a compromising letter that attests to the dubious legitimacy of the king in the possibility of being the true son of the Duke of Buckingham (Nicholas Rowe). The musketeers join forces for royal vengeance with the shout : ¨One for all and all for one¨. Then , the musketeers whose friendship has become a legend to stir the hearts of men and shouting their slogan set out to help the king and free the princess of Spain who has been kidnapped by the hoodlums of Mazarino. Straightforward as well as gallant Valentine and the three musketeers join forces and scheme a plan to save her , clashing against a malicious Lady Bolton.

Entertaining and funny version with overwhelming swordplay in nifty style, this is a modern version of the classic Dumas novel set in 17th Century France. It's a simple and enjoyable rendition from the immortal novel with pretty budget, attractive scenarios and sympathetic performances by main star cast and secondary cast . The picture contains rousing action , intrigue , romantic adventure , romance , treachery , mayhem and a lot of fencing. Resulting to be an amusing swashbuckling with lavish production , glamorous gowns and lush scenarios . This is an entertaining television adventure in two episodes, full of action, comedy with tongue-in-cheek , long jumps while fighting and, of course , a lot of swordplay . Starring the charming Susie Amis who bounds and leaps , fights , hits and run . Susie executes athletic feats , moving sword-play and spectacular acrobatics , she performed most of the stunts. She is accompanied by a good cast made up of the veteran actors: John Rhys-Davies as Porthos , the deceased Christopher Cazenove as Athos and Allan Corduner as Aramis, while their sons also musketeers are played by unknown players . Furthermore , a vein of humour is evident here, especially among the oldest musketeers and among them with their young children, though sometimes falling flat. For this movie itself , though , energetic and frantic are the best adjectives you could think of to describe its attraction .

Packs an adequate and colorful cinematography stunningly showed on the splendorous images , being filmed on location in Croatia, well photographed by cameraman David Watkin. Along with a thrilling as well as evocative musical score. Big production financed by notorious producers, such as: Robert Halmi, Larry Levinson, Nick Lombardo, Fred and Sandra Weintraub who wrote the script too. The miniseries was professionally directed by Steven Boyum, but not remarkable or anything special. This cool filmmaker provided visual style , comedy , fencing , drama , clangorous action in equal proportions . Steven is a versatile creator in Television and Film. Boyum has produced and directed hundreds of episodes in acclaimed series such as "Gen V" (Amazon), "The Old Man" (FX), "Goosebumps" (Disney+), "Supernatural," "Lethal Weapon," "Black Sails," and "Hawaii Five-0," along with numerous feature films, mini-series. ¨

This classy story is remade on several versions ,as the MGM classic version in musical style by George Sidney with Gene Kelly . The three musketeers (1973), The four Musketeers (1974), The return of the Musketeers(1989) with similar artist and technician team, all of them starring Michael York .1993 modern adaptation by Stephen Herek with Charlie Sheen and 2001 rendition by Peter Hyams with Justin Chambers, among others. ¨The Femme Musketeer¨ is an outstanding and entertaining adaptation of the classic story that will appeal to the costumer genre buffs and it turns out to be acceptable adaptation with big budget loosely based on the Dumas novel.

This actually isn't that bad. Historically it's complete rubbish, of course (and why is *D'Artagnan* always the one who ends up with a daughter instead of a son? -- see the enjoyable "D'Artagnan's Daughter" of 1994, for example!) and Susie Amy's unfortunate accent grates every time she opens her mouth, but as modern-day swashbucklers go, it was refreshingly free from knowing allusions and would-be updating of the genre. It was just played straight out for the adventure, and all the better for it.

The 'younger generation' - the sons of Athos, Porthos and Aramis - were well-written, acquiring individuality of their own even before we found out who they were supposed to be, and not just clones of their respective fathers. I loved Aramis's offspring as a devout gambler, and Athos' as a cocky womaniser... The Musketeers themselves I thought bore relatively little relation to the characters of the book, with the exception of Michael York's very welcome reprise of his classic role as D'Artagnan. Experience really does show, I'm afraid; he completely acted Susie Amy, for one, off the screen. I'd far rather remember him this way than in the terminally un-funny 'Return of the Musketeers' from 1989 -- a corpse that should have been let lie if ever there was one -- and was extremely appreciative of the opportunity.

I watched the first episode on a whim. I was sufficiently hooked to bother to video-tape the following one when I knew I was going to be out... and bother to watch it immediately I got back, an accolade if ever there was one!

An attractive-looking cast. Good comradeship, avoiding too-obvious romance. Depardieu, playing an Italian-speaking character in a Francophone milieu with a heavy French accent, was out of place, and poor Susie's lower-class London tones were equally inappropriate. Not a classic... but far from the embarrassing mess it could have been.

An entertaining 2-hour movie, fluffed to 3 hours on the US DVD release. It's rather entertaining, for the most part, except that there are great lulls in the action as well as the main plot.

The movie frequently pauses on trivial scenes which focus on unnecessary personal interactions between characters. I suppose if they cut those parts, the original movie might have moved more quickly and yet possibly too quickly for younger child-audiences, and since this is indeed a Hallmark made-for-television mini-series, it's understandable and somehow tolerable.

All of the action/fight-scenes are in frame-flicker-mode, disguising these through safely- and slowly-filmed sequences which are then speeded up, much like old Asian martial-arts films that make everyone laugh, these days. Some of these are well-done, but after a while they become rather irritating, and some still appear to be in fast-speed, despite the attempts to use the frame-flicker-mode.

The old characters from the original Three Musketeers story are brought into the action later, including Michael York reprising his original role from the very popular 1970's Three Musketeers and Four Musketeers movies.

Overall, it's great watching for fans of those 1970's versions, as well as young feminist-heroine fans, and appropriate for younger family members, a rarity these days.