This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

People are voting emotionally.

A Disappointing Continuation

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

A combination adventure/comedy/romance, it is simply superb. It has flair and it moves fast. Everyone is good in it, even, surprisingly, Racquel. There's more than a touch of parody and self-parody. It's like they all watched too many swashbuckling movies. To wit: D'Artagnan (York) tries to extinguish a candle with a flourish of his sword across the flame. It doesn't work; he shakes his head, removes his gauntlet; and puts it out with his finger and thumb. Racquel's husband, Spike Milligan, keeps trying to arrange to have sex with her, but something always goes wrong, including and especially the interference of the Cardinal Richelieu and his henchmen. And Heston is superb as Richelieu. Great turn as villain. Great because he plays it straight. That's what makes him so effective. He and Christopher Lee play off each other brilliantly. (He walks into his torture chamber, talking to either Spike or Chistoperher Lee (I forget which), and one of the victims hanging from within one of the cages says very respectfully, "And how are you, Your grace." The fey king who has his courtyard lawn manicured like a chessboard plays the game with live dogs. He is perfect, too. The swordplay, of which there is plenty, is brilliantly choreographed. They actually had to learn to fight with swords. Lee almost was killed. If there is a hero, it's D'Artagnan's man-servant. When I saw it as a young man when it came out, the audience cheered loudly when the guys came to the rescue at the end.

I feel obliged to share my thoughts about the Musketeer d'Artagnian - the way they are in the mind of someone in his mid-fifties. Nowadays, adolescents doesn't read books as much as we did as kids. We had also bicycle (various models), sarbacanes (blowgun with paper darts), marble or glass balls for playing the Triangle (I don't know the name of that game in English), etc. So, how about my having read the book "Three Musketeers" and its sequels at age 10-13 and being totally fascinated. I didn't know French history and going to the movies was expensive though greatest entertainment at that time. Television was dull, parentage was boring and life was just taking a start.So, I didn't watch this film exactly in 1973 but some ten years later on video. My first encounter with the Musketeers was in "Le Masque de Fer" (1962) with Jean Marais, which doesn't feature the rest of the Musketeers but is swell. French cinema was making great adaptations of historical novels written by 19th century Romanticists - Alexandre Dumas pere, Victor Hugo, Honore de Balzac, Eugene Sue, Stendhal and others. Altogether, the French were leaders in Adventure genre both in fiction and cinema; Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper, however, were more popular in the Anglophone world.Nee, I started this review from another angle. Wikipedia gives nice summary plot of the three novels from d'Artagnan Saga: 1. "Three Musketeers", set in 1625; 2. "Twenty Years After", set in 1648; and 3. "Vicomte of Bragelonne or Ten Years Later", set between 1660 and 1673. It was the Age of Louis XIV, the Sun King who was the longest reigning monarch of all times (72 years). Now d'Artagnan, whether a real person or fictional hero, is dubious personality. He died as Marshal of France, at the siege of Maastricht, from a cannon ball (yet I read elsewhere in a critical study that he died in Bastille Prison and was "de facto" the alleged "Man with Iron Mask"; Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, was younger twin brother of Louis XIV and was highly fictionalized but he has proved progeny that ruled as Louis Philippe I of France from 1830 till 1848).Right or wrong, Alexandre Dumas wrote a great adventure novel that is unsurpassed in its dramatization while little inconsistencies here and there are not important. For instance, Athos died of grieving because his son Raoul was killed by Barbary Coast corsairs in Algiers; Porthos is smashed by stones in a cave while fleeing the royal guards; Aramis escapes by sea and becomes a Jesuit in Spain. This is the fate of the Musketeers.Lastly, my personal opinion about "Three Musketeers" (1973). I rate it higher than the next installment "Three Musketeers" (1993) only because the performance of Chris O'Donnell as d'Artagnan is so poor. Thank You!P.S. My first instance doesn't work here. Several weeks after I wrote this review I was curtailed by a friend in conversation. It appears that I have watched even an earlier version of the Three Musketeers story in the 1970s - i.e., "Les 3 Mousquetaires" (1953), but my overall impression as a kid was that this movie was comedy with lot of laughter in it mainly because of the role of Planchet (Bourvil); the latter was a great French comedian, sorrily forgotten today. I haven't watched this 1953 version on video, whatsoever!

Michael York's performance as country-boy-gone-to-the-city D'Artagnan in this film is such a touchstone that it allowed him to spend most of his adulthood making only guest appearances in middling films and television shows while remaining a major international star. There have been other 'Musketeers' movies and other 'swashbuckler' films, but this 1973 film sits smack in the middle of the convergence of these two sub- (and sub-sub-) genres as the reigning best of both. Charlton Heston chews scenery as Cardinal Richlieu, the main villain. Christopher Lee is marvelous as his pirate-horseman henchman Roquefort. Raquel Welch and Faye Dunaway are set against each other as the epitomes of female virtue and female enmity, respectively, and both are, it so happens, ravishingly beautiful and beautifully costumed in the production. The soul and the greatest thrum of gravity are supplied by Oliver Reed as the Musketeer "Athos." Reed, a notoriously hard-living, wild-tempered actor, roils seas of pathos and also brotherly bonhomie within his character in this film, and his projected regrets over the impossibility of perfect love and also the encroachment of a soulless government in the person of the Cardinal and his crimson gendarmes add emotional heft. This is a brilliantly and beautifully directed, edited, and shot film that yet does not take itself too seriously. The ethos of a Musketeer, as Dumas hagiographized them, is to find time for both fighting and frolic, and this movie strikes a proper balance in finding both.

Let me begin by expressing how refreshing it feels to watch a series of action scenes without wretched shaky cam! After seeing Guardians of the Galaxy and the new Ninja Turtles movies at the cinema recently, I had almost forgotten what it was like to have a comprehensible fight sequence.This 1973 version of The Three Musketeers is the best version of the story I have ever seen, even better than the over-praised Gene Kelly adaptation. It's athletic, earthy, and light-hearted, paired with one of the most perfect casts ever brought together for a movie and Michel Legrand's amazing score which proves adventurous and heart-achingly romantic in equal turns.If you love action and comedy, then I cannot recommend this enough. I never wanted it to end and cannot wait to watch the sequel.