Memorable, crazy movie

good back-story, and good acting

best movie i've ever seen.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It was an okay movie that flowed okay. There weren't too many low action points. It was just rather dragged out. Maybe they should have taken out the second captureand freeing of iron mask. Main thing that bothered me for the first sixty minutes was the different accents and dialects. Leo, the captain, and the three musketeers all have very different accents in "Paris." One out of the 5 was French. And I don't care if they were all mid-western American, but having one semi-french sounding guy makes it obvious that the other are not.Thanks

This is just as bad as my title sounds. Just a terrible equation. Cast full of great actors, really all great actors I mean: Jeremy Irons, Depardieu, Gabriel Byrne, Malkovich, DiCaprio... and neither of them can even make this lift above the ground an inch. It's incredibly dull, flat, utterly predictable, tedious... every action scene is like a caricature of an action scene, every dialog a caricature of a dialog, everything is cheap, rushed, from start to finish, the one-liners, the constant stares into the camera/long pauses between lines attempting the dramatic... in many places, if not the whole thing, it looks like a film which screenplay/story was thought out some night by some bored film people who just wanted something to make to merely entertain their then idly bored selves. Really. It's so badly made it's immediately beyond credible and confirms its atrocious global quality throughout. It's a little bit like a joke if you will. Oh, and the plot twists. This is really just one of those films that are so bad they're entertaining.

There's a sort of pall that hangs over The Man in the Iron Mask. It's a feeling of... mediocrity. I know that no expense was spared in production. It's a fine specimen of movie entertainment. Sets, costumes, cinematography, editing. And, of course, big headliners.The one thing that feels skimped on is story management. It feels dilettante-ish; like simple karmic elements tinker-toyed together and intended for delectation by a 5-year-old snuzzled into bed with his teddy bear. Transitively, the actors--especially the headliners--come off like their tongues are weighed down by the knowledge that they're reading fay, simplistic storytelling. Somewhere between the standard script and the interp (the direction, also, mayhaps?), a ball has been dropped.After viewing, I thought, OK: What's a good counter-example? A flick that has all the same technical finery, including roughly the same period, but also possessing a picaresque narrative, with character study, as deep as it is broad, would be... Barry Lyndon.If you're thinking, "That boring old fossil?!?!" then I'd just say... OK, maybe "Iron Mask" is more your speed, and... godspeed! But I see the technical finery of a flick as merely a substrate. The story is everything. I do expect both (good technique and narrative depth), but actually am more respectful toward flicks that, even if they're technically lacking, at least deliver on the mythic level in a satisfying way.So I give this one a '6' for the technique, but I can't creep that any higher.If you like a simple intrigue fable and lots of swashbuckling, "Iron Mask" will do.

OK, if you're a stickler for accuracy in retelling French history, you're going to have problems with this film. The same goes for anyone who wants a script close to the content of Dumas' book. There are quite significant deviations from both.Having said that, the story that this movie DOES tell is logically consistent, satisfying and inspiring within itself. (And actually possibly an improvement on Dumas' last Musketeers novel, which rather gets lost along its way at times. And isn't exactly history either!)In fact, the first time I saw this movie on its cinema release I rated it as one of my favourite films, and it still is one of my favourite escapist or inspiring movies. It was never going to be an award winner, or a "most important story" told in film. But the story does have a significant moral to it, there are 'journeys of discovery' made by various characters, the authentic music and settings are great, the acting (from such a skilled cast) is mostly excellent and the last 15 minutes are especially inspiring and heartstring-tugging.Of the principal actors, Gabriel Byrne and Jeremy Irons shine. They are totally convincing, with Byrne really showing his capabilities. And the pleasure of hearing Irons deliver his lines is almost worth the price of admission to any of his films. Depardieu is mainly the comic relief, but he does it well. Leonardo DiCaprio, who when this film was released was one of my least favourite actors of all time, pleasantly surprised me by showing that he could act after all, managing to convey two very different but related characters pretty convincingly. John Malkovitch I know as a great actor, but often in this film I found him the least convincing of any of the main characters, definitely the odd man out. Much more than DiCaprio, his broad American accent just doesn't seem to fit with all the other surroundings. Or was it because he seemed to be half-asleep when delivering some of his lines?Other reviewers have similarly talked about the weird mix of accents, with supposed French characters voicing British, American and rather pronounced Franglais accents. It was only distracting for me after several viewings - I don't particularly recall this on my first viewing, which left me enthralled. For all except perhaps devoted linguistic pedants the willing suspension of disbelief should suffice, and the accents question certainly doesn't detract from letting good actors tell a good story. The Musketeers are supposed to represent an inspiring ideal of loyalty to one another, and to an ideal France in the form of its King. This film certainly expresses the disappointment of many of the people already with the excesses and abuses of royalty and nobility which would lead to the French Revolution about 125 years later. Athos voices the common dream, "...that one day we would finally be able to serve a king who was worthy of the throne". Unfortunately, few of the kings of France up to this point (and beyond) would qualify for this description. Nor, in reality, would Louis XIV despite the feel-good voice-over at the end.But the real history is not the point. Did you worry about the reality of "The Adventures of Robin Hood" or "Raiders of the Lost Ark"? Real truths about the human condition are told in fiction, rather than non-fiction. And by the last "All for One, One for All", most viewers will be moved and wanting to cheer along with the Musketeers.