The Count of Monte Cristo (Kevin Reynolds, 2002)

You have to approach this with some trepidation, knowing that the director was previously responsible for bastardising the Robin Hood story with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Happily, the umpteenth film adaptation of Dumas's novel is faithful to the source where it counts and does not Americanise the content, even if the eponymous hero is played by Jim Caviezel. In fact, since the plot of the novel gets more ludicrously convoluted as it goes on, as is so often the case with 19th-century potboilers, the decision of the film to pare down and streamline the events and relationships after the main selling point, Dantès's years of captivity, is a judicious one. This cannot extend to getting rid of the original's melodrama in the final tying up of revenge and reconciliation and so greatness is denied, but it is nevertheless a respectable modern addition to the swashbuckling genre.

6/10