The Man in the Iron Mask Review

Four leading men share a table here and no two hold the same passport: an Englishman, an American, a Frenchman and an Irishman playing seventeenth century France. Jeremy Irons plays Aramis as a purring Jesuit conspirator, John Malkovich gives Athos real grief over a son sent to die at the front, Gerard Depardieu plays Porthos as a lecherous drunk, and Gabriel Byrne finds a genuinely sad D'Artagnan in the noise.

Randall Wallace, directing for the first time after writing Braveheart, never decides whether he is making a farce or a tragedy, and the joins show every time the film cuts from Malkovich in mourning to a suicide attempt staged as slapstick. DiCaprio has the worst of it. His Louis is a curled lip and a flat California vowel, his Philippe is wide eyes and little else, and the two never feel like one person split in half.

Peter Suschitzky photographs Vaux-le-Vicomte and the masked ball handsomely, which only sharpens the drop into dialogue written for a poster. The ending gives the game away: aging musketeers charge a firing line shouting the old motto and the young soldiers are so moved that they aim wide, after which Louis lunges at his brother, D'Artagnan takes the blade, and Nick Glennie-Smith's score swells over a funeral and a coronation.