Les Trois Mousquetaires: Milady (2024)

As breaking film adaptations into two parts is all the rage, we now have the second half of the big screen, French, adaptation of The Three Musketeers, this one subtitled "Milady" to highlight how the film has taken Green's character and made her central to the story and our attention. And I am here for it. I truly appreciated the first film (2023's D'Artagnan, aptly subtitled to focus on the actual main character of the novel The Three Musketeers) and this second half is bigger and badder and gives us one of the years greatest villains and gives Green the chance to shine. 

This film seems to veer from the source material more than the first one did but most of the film's changes are fascinating and make for great swashbuckling and melodrama. The film is epic in a big screen pop corn flick sort of way but directed as historical drama with all the gravitas that comes with it. It is easy to let yourself get lost in this classic adventure and let it take you where it will. 

This adaptation's real strength comes in its ability to create delicious ambiguity. We are to sympathize both with the monarchy and the anti-monarchists. We are to applaud the introduction of Hannibal, an analogue for the real life first black Musketeer. And we get the wonderfully complicated, love to hate her but also hate to love her, Milady. Green tears up the screen with her tour de force portrayal. While Cardinal Richelieu is normally the big bad in adaptations, here he is sidelined by the far more captivating Milady. And thank the heavens for that. 

So together D'Artagnan and Milday create a fun and very satisfying double feature revisiting one of literatures favourite adventure stories but perhaps through a new lens. And that lens, in my opinion, makes it a far more interesting story in the end. 

I won't spoil it but the ending certainly leaves open the possibility for more, in fact almost demands it. I'd be down for another chapter in this series. 

Les Trois Mousquetaires: Milady

Starring: Eva Green, François Civil, Vincent Cassel, Pio Marmaï, Romain Duris, Lyna Khoudri, Louis Garrel, Vicki Krieps, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Ralph Amoussou, Éric Ruf 

Director: Matthieu Delaporte

Writers: Alexandre de La Patellière, Matthieu Delaporte