Hollywood’s Forgotten How to Make Movies Like The Count of Monte Cristo

Is there a more purely entertaining novel in the classic literary canon than Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo? Many have abridged it and updated it and riffed on it over the decades. In TV and film, there have been Indian versions, Chinese versions, Mexican versions, Sri Lankan versions, Korean versions, Turkish versions, to go with the multitudinous French and American versions. That central premise — of betrayal, followed by self-improvement, followed by revenge dished out patiently, ingeniously, and viciously — remains rock-solid compelling, no matter which country or era one is living in. It’s almost impossible to screw up a movie of it. You don’t need to Hollywoodize the thing. It’s already simple, and filled with action and cloak and dagger machination; Hollywood’s been borrowing from it for decades, as have superhero tales. (Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight films clearly owe a debt to Dumas.) So, how interesting that the latest French adaptation, an expansive, handsomely mounted, big-budgeted affair written and directed by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, doesn’t just deliver Dumas — it also serves as a reminder of the kind of movie Hollywood has forgotten how to make.

The novel, first serialized in the 1840s, was steeped in Napoleonic intrigue, and this adaptation retains some of those elements without getting too overwhelmed. After saving a shipwrecked woman who is carrying a secret letter from the previously exiled Napoleon Bonaparte, young nobleman Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney) is accused of being part of an anti-government conspiracy. Among the accusers is his best friend, Fernand (Bastien Bouillon), who’s also in love with Mercedes (Anaïs Demoustier), the woman our hero had intended to marry. Sent off to a remote prison island and thought dead by his loved ones, Edmond meets a fellow inmate who spends years teaching him all the knowledge of the world and reveals the location of a lost Templar treasure. Upon his escape, Edmond finds the treasure, and reappears in Paris as the impossibly worldly and absurdly wealthy Count of Monte Cristo. His betrayers have all advanced in French society, with Fernand marrying Mercedes. Armed with an array of disguises and contacts in the underworld, as well as two younger associates (Julien de Saint Jean and Anamaria Vartolomei), each with their own ax to grind against these men, the Count executes an elaborate plan to destroy the lives that destroyed his.

But will his single-minded dedication to vengeance corrupt his own soul? The beauty of The Count of Monte Cristo, and a key to its enduring appeal, lies in how it captures both the exaltation and corrosion of revenge; it indulges in enormously satisfying, ancient blood-debt cruelty while recognizing the power of self-awareness and mercy. For much of their 178-minute running time, Delaporte and de La Patellière let us delight in the spectacle of Dantès and his associates weaving their sinister, at times mysterious web — well-positioning us for the eventual reckoning, when we’ll be thoroughly invested in all these characters and their impending fates.

The writer-directors also co-wrote last year’s two Three Musketeers films, similarly epic Dumas adaptations that made a ton of money and won awards in France. These movies reverse the classic direction of cultural transmission. Hollywood borrowed these stories and made them their own; now, Delaporte and de La Patellière lift high Hollywood style to reclaim the tales for France. The Count’s powers of disguise would make Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt blush with envy; his tight, severe outfits and black robes would prompt Batman to beg for the name of his tailor. (With his big sad eyes, half-snarl, and slender physique, Niney makes a fine earnest nobleman, as well as a compellingly embittered angel of darkness; the Count’s fake little mustache helps, too.) Thundering, Zimmer-ian drums and roaring strings practically accompany Edmond’s every move; there’s even some slow-motion thrown in there for good measure. The movie might be set in the early 19th century, but its hero is a 21st century badass.

All this might be a bit much for those who like their international epics more refined and genteel. Once upon a time, I might have even agreed. But watching The Count of Monte Cristo, I was reminded all over again that we really don’t see movies like this anymore — certainly not coming out of the American film industry. Period action-adventures used to be Hollywood’s thing. The studio system had the means, the talent, and the will to make big, expensive, rip-roaring tales set in the past, featuring stars like Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn and Charlton Heston. The collapse of the studio system took those types of pictures down with it, but they did come back in the late 1980s and 90s, capitalizing on the success of titles like Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and The Last of the Mohicans, and arguably hit their industrial peak with the runaway success of The Mask of Zorro and the Best Picture wins of Braveheart and Gladiator (two very different movies that I can’t help but always lump together). There was even a delightful, late-breaking Count of Monte Cristo adaptation in 2002, directed by Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves’ Kevin Reynolds and featuring a wonderfully snide Guy Pearce as the chief villain.

All that couldn’t prevent the genre from being replaced by endless fantasy franchises in Hollywood’s post-9/11 realignment. And what rare films subsequently emerged were often burdened with the impossible task of speaking (weakly, obsequiously) to the contemporary moment, whatever that may be; look no further than the mess that is Gladiator II for an example. It’s hard not to feel like the formula for successfully making such pictures has been lost along the way. But The Count of Monte Cristo, with its familiar, back-to-basics story and its successful merging of old and new, can perhaps point us in the right direction. Still, one need not worry about the fates of industries to appreciate it. After all these years, the elemental pull of Dumas’s tale remains irresistible.