I doubt the spins Alexandre Dumas is doing in his grave are quite as tight and fluid as those done by the character D'Artagnan in The Musketeer. Leaping from ladders, bouncing from wine barrels, all the while fighting off enemies with his trusty saber, D'Artagnan is a 17th-century swashbuckler blessed with blooming anti-gravity knickers.

And thank God, too. After Disney's disastrous remake of The Three Musketeers in 1993, I was beginning to think the dusty old writer had been abandoned by Hollywood, that maybe in the age of CGI, good old-fashioned swashbuckling had become obsolete. But no. Thanks to The Matrix, Charlie's Angels, and (perhaps most importantly) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, D'Artagnan et al. have been given another shot on the big screen--and the surprising thing is, it ain't all bad. It ain't all good, either, but who wants to nitpick when Catherine Deneuve is slumming so beautifully?

If The Fast and the Furious ranks as the season's best mindless entertainment, The Musketeer is a close second. A lean 100 minutes long, it's a PG-13 clusterfuck of spectacular fight scenes, ridiculous acting, and occasionally inspired direction. Choreographed by the great Xin Xin Xiong, it is a perfect marriage of classic literature and pop violence--a love match that works better than you'd expect. If you walk into the film at least somewhat excited by the premise, you won't leave disappointed, which is more than can be said for most movies of the past summer.

(Side note: There are so many wine barrels used in The Musketeer [the French being notorious drunks and all, even if their accents here sound suspiciously Kentuckian], that I had to wonder if the producers had a drinking game--i.e., "BARREL!" and drink, "BARREL!" and drink--in mind during pre-production. If so, God bless 'em. If not, well... God bless high school, because there will be one soon.)