Edmund Dantes returns again in an epic retelling of the tale of betrayal and redemption.
For those who don't know the tale is the story of Dantes who is locked away in a prison by his so-called friends who want what he has and want him lost so that their misdeeds won't be found out. Told of a vast fortune by a fellow prisoner, Dantes escapes and then returns to France after years away as the Count of Monte Cristo and takes revenge on those who wronged him.
I love this story in all its forms. Sure, the movies have altered the massive tale, but in doing so it's created some truly great versions (Robert Donat, Jim Cavievzal, Richard Chamberlain all star in versions I love). No film has really come close to telling the tale as written because it's too damn big a tale.
This version makes a good go of it. Running a solid 3 hours, the film brings in a lot of elements and characters that other versions leave out (the daughter of the pasha for example) while also bringing in new twists, the masks the Dantes uses to impersonate a wide variety of people. The result is a film that plays like a novel and which stands firmly on its own feet. I enjoyed the hell out of it, and I can't wait to see it again. (And before you ask let me see it a few more times before I put it into the ranking of various versions.)
This is great cinema and highly recommended - especially if you can see it on a big screen and get lost in its world.
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