THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (2024) - Mark Reviews Movies

The Count of Monte Cristo, Samuel Goldwyn Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 19, 2024

The old stories and the traditional ways of telling them don't have to feel stuffy and old-fashioned, and the makers of this new The Count of Monte Cristo, adapted from Alexandre Dumas' classic novel from 1844, understand that. They don't do anything unique in terms of style, since the film looks and feels like a period drama, or adaptation, because it is mostly faithful to the source material, but there's obvious passion and skill in front of and behind the camera here. It's a nearly three-hour tale of thwarted promise and revenge, spanning more than a couple of decades, and co-writers/co-directors Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière keep it moving with the potency of Dumas' characters and the elaborate intrigue of the author's plotting.

Dumas' novel, one of his most popular and enduring, hasn't been adapted for the big screen in more than 20 years. Sure, that's just luck or happenstance for the filmmakers, but the absence makes this new version feel refreshing.

Mostly, though, it feels a bit different, because the filmmakers respect Dumas' novel enough to transform it into a legitimate epic. Condensing the material could work (It did for the 2002 American version), but this is as much a story about time—how it changes or doesn't change people, emotions, circumstances, the political climate and a whole host of other things—as it is about questions of vengeance and justice.

Perhaps the most famous section of the book, after all, takes place in the cells of an island prison, where our woe-begotten hero Edmond Dantès has been imprisoned for a life sentence on false charges of treason. If we don't feel the weight of the passage of time and the uncertainty of what the world outside the prison might look like, can we really buy into the complex scheme the protagonist concocts to exact revenge on the three people most responsible for putting him in this seemingly hopeless situation?

Maybe, we could, but the film's length is one of its most obvious strengths. It allows the characters and the plot to breathe in a way that a more abridged adaptation simply doesn't permit.

We get a very good sense of this Edmond, played by Pierre Niney in what could be classified as dual roles with how severely but wisely the actor's performance shifts, before the prison episode. He's a crew member on a merchant ship, circa 1815 and with the political backdrop of an exiled Napoleon trying to return to France. He's the one man to dive into the water to save a drowning woman when the ship comes across another on fire on the sea.

His reward back home is to be named the captain of the vessel, since he was more concerned with saving the company's honor than its cargo. Meanwhile, Danglars (Patrick Mille), the captain who ordered Edmond not to do anything, loses his position and starts a vast conspiracy in motion.

It comes to a head on the day of Edmond's wedding to Mercédès (Anaïs Demousiter), a woman from a well-to-do family for whom his family has worked as servants. All of Edmond's career-based optimism and swoony feelings of romance come crashing down when Danglars, prosecutor Villefort (Laurent Lafitte), and Edmond's own best friend Fernand (Bastien Bouillon), envious of his cousin Mercédès' love for Edmond, put our man in prison for life without a trial.

To go over the machinations of the story, which include a daring prison escape and a search for hidden treasure on an Italian island before the proper plot even begins, would be fruitless. Either one knows this story from Dumas' novel or previous adaptations, or one has taken in at least parts of it through cultural osmosis. Any classic story worthy of such longevity just becomes part of common knowledge, and the best that can be said of Delaporte and La Patellière's film is that they trust the inherent strength of the tale and give it the time it needs to reveal its layers.

Most of those layers, of course, come from Edmond, who dubs himself the Count of Monte Cristo after his adventures in prison and treasure hunting, figuring out his enemies' many weaknesses, exploiting their corrupt characters, and ensuring their downfalls by way of various financial, political, and physical methods. Dumas' central question, posed by Edmond's incarcerated neighbor Abbé Faria (Pierfrancesco Favino), is whether the man will use wealth and the power it brings in order to do good or let it fill his heart with hatred.

That's not just a question for Edmond here, because it becomes one for his accomplices in revenge Andrèa (Julien de Saint Jean), Villefort's illegitimate son whom the prosecutor left for dead, and Haydée (Anamaria Vartolomei), a beguiling young woman whose family was devastated during the course of Fernand's military career. Against lavish backdrops of grand estates and re-creations of 19th century Paris, these three characters wrestle with loves lost and ones that, under different circumstances, could be found. Meanwhile, our villains continue their corruption and, rather satisfyingly, have no clue that the agent of their potential downfall is standing right in front of them, becoming a trusted friend, and putting on airs and disguises to keep them ignorant.

The whole of the film is satisfying, really, because the filmmakers are clearly confident in the material and their ability to bring it to old-fashioned life. The Count of Monte Cristo is a beautiful-looking film, but the look of it never gets in the way of its sturdy foundation: rich characters in a tale that has stood the test of time. This version is a good reminder why that is.

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