Three Fighters

When the movie started I thought it might be worth a look. But 10 minutes into it I realized this was a new new level of bad theater.

The premise was hokey and the director was in love with a style of cinematographic where the shot pops to a zoom in. It was constant and annoying.

The moment I know this was the worst movie I seen this year was when they turned on the oven of an electric stove to blow up a house. This was the typical attention to detail the cast and director gave this movie. I saw no less than 6 sequences that were ripped off from other movies. And terribly reproduced as well.

Save your money and the hour and a half of your lives and skip seeing this film, unless you want to see how not to film and action movie.

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.

I had read some reviews for this film, both on here and on another site, so I was prepared for the worst but let me tell you it was even worse than I'd anticipated, much worse in fact. Try to imagine the worst film you've ever seen, multiply by a hundred and you're getting close to the depths that this film sunk to. I just wish that 0/10 (or even a minus score) was an option.

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.

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!