The Count of Monte Cristo (2024)
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The Count of Monte Cristo Movie Review
The Count of Monte Cristo is a 2024 French historical adventure film directed by Matthieu Delaporte and starring Pierre Niney. It’s a worthy adaptation.
After escaping from an island prison where he spent 14 years for being wrongly accused of state treason, Edmond Dantès returns as the Count of Monte Cristo to exact revenge on the men who betrayed him. The eponymous Alexander Dumas classic has been adapted to film numerous times by this point, so this movie really had to take it up a notch to deliver something different, which they did to a degree. It’s a familiar tale, but one elevated by strong technical aspects.
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This is a highly lavish production that is absolutely gorgeous to look at. The sets are incredibly sumptuous, the costumes are phenomenal and the attention to detail in recreating its setting and time period is truly staggering. The score is also lovely and quite modern, elevating the action on screen significantly. The movie has phenomenal action set pieces and superb adventurous elements and those made it more contemporary to modern audiences.
Those scenes were so terrific that I found the dramatic elements lacking in comparison. While the themes of revenge and forgiveness were solidly explored, the characterization wasn’t as strong as needed for this type of material to really resonate and some of the dialogue scenes went for too long, making the second half in particular feel a bit stuffy and overdrawn.
Pierre Niney is very good in the main role and he was so well cast as he looks and acts the part. His character is excellent and the antagonists were also memorable, but the female characters suffered in comparison as they were less developed. Even more problematic were the romantic elements as those felt rushed and overly pronounced with straightforward and unsubtle dialogue.
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This Count of Monte Cristo was at its best in the first act. I adored the prison scenes and the escape was handled in such a cinematic and intense manner. The final sword fight was also memorable. I loved all of those action-adventure scenes so much that the dramatic stuff felt inferior when compared to them. The acting and directing are both quite confident, but I did feel its length in that overlong second half.
2024’s The Count of Monte Cristo is a very good adaptation of this often adapted tale that is at its best in the first half and at its worst in the second one. The action-adventure elements were thrilling, cinematic and superbly filmed whereas the dramatic elements were a bit too prolonged, stuffy and even a bit tedious. The acting performances are uniformly strong, though the characters were not all well developed. The prison scenes and the ending were a treat while the middle section was arguably rougher. The highlights are its technical aspects that elevated it to a truly rousing epic – the sets are incredible, the costumes are lavish, the score is quite contemporary and the cinematography is phenomenal.
My Rating – 4
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