Aside from what goes on onscreen in the latest version of Alexandre Dumas pere's 19th century novel, it's a lesson we mortals at the cineplex learn, as there is much for which the director and screenwriter should atone: an implausibly concealed identity; the passing of sixteen years represented by a costume change and some gray hairs; the hero's initial, apparently brain-damaged naivete. But how refreshing to have the film's narrative force and the audience's emotional investment in the characters outweigh these frailties!

The Count of Monte Cristo does a graceful waltz with the ratings system -- the violent scenes are effective yet distant, lacking blood or suspense, and the implied sex is only briefly glimpsed. Just as we are set up for a sweaty, bodice-rippin' sex scene, the action shifts to the next morning where the lovers lie asleep. Kudos to director Kevin Reynolds (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Waterworld) for making a PG-13 feature that teenagers will savor as much as adults will, without any damaging compromise to either's enjoyment.

In Count, Reynolds has shed his sometime featured actor, Kevin Costner, and picked up James Caviezel as the hero, Edmund Dantes, and Guy Pearce as the villain, Fernand Mondego. Some may accuse Pearce of hamming it up (his teeth seem to mirror the condition of his soul, growing more rotten as the action progresses), but a movie so morally pure and emotionally direct needs a scenery-chewing baddie to wear the requisite cravat and mince, strut, and smoulder his way into our bad graces. Is Pearce's preening immorality as Fernand any less pure than Edmund's incorruptibility? The actors are only balancing one another. Fernand isn't allowed any depth by the screenplay and must hold the same emotional note for two hours, but Pearce is clearly having fun with a juicy role.

Caviezel's restrained, passive acting style suits both his character's identities: he is illiterate rube and masquerading "noble," more interested in setting traps for his human prey than skewering them with a rapier. He has a strange quality of masculine helplessness that's milked early in the film, before he's exposed to the underside of justice and morality. He seems congenitally unable to perceive the maelstrom of threats surrounding around him: the figurative time bomb he's entrusted with, Fernand's trustworthlessness and designs on his fiancee, and a corrupt legal official.

Unsatisfied with wealth and status, Fernand envies the lot of his poor but handsome low-born friend Edmund, who gets the girl and a big promotion by dint of moral decency. Disgusted and jealous, Fernand's thus-overheated inferiority complex drives the film, his ache to fill his soul's emptiness through selfish pleasures and immoral actions mirroring the wronged Edmund's conflicted lust for revenge for the damage Fernand inflicts

The movie and everything in it are utterly sure-footed and sound. It doesn't aspire to artistic heights, but there are no missteps in the level path it treads. Carping that this movie gives short shrift to the richness and complexity of 1846 novel is like going to Taco Bell and complaining that the Steak Gordita Supreme fails to capture the richness and complexity of Mexican cuisine. Who expects art from Kevin Reynolds, even when the source material is a one-hundred and fifty year old literary classic? (And weren't people allowed to write splashy populist potboilers in the 19th century?) The characters are engaging, the plot emotionally (if not intellectually) captivating, the costumes and scenery sumptuous, the casting appropriate, and the performances capable and even passionate. The annoying modernism of Reynolds' Robin Hood is gone, replaced by a conversational yet heartfelt tone more appropriate to the material and more timeless in feel.

The films twin themes -- that vengefulness and happiness are mutually exclusive, and that divine justice trumps human justice -- are not simplistic in themselves, but are presented in a bald and oversimplified manner fitted to the movie's passionate, straightforward, and moralistic tone. Edmund grows and changes, but he travels a broad, obvious path, seeming more to follow an inevitable moral arc than to give mature consideration to the workings of fate and justice.

But like the movie's other faults, it's a sin I'm willing to forgive.

Jennifer Saylor, January 30, 2002