"The Man in the Iron Mask" is a weird movie where most of the individual pieces are good but they never add up.

Seriously, the cast of the movie is stacked, first of all. Obviously there's DiCaprio in his dual role (of which he's better as the petulant Louis XIV), but you also have a murderer's row of actors as the Musketeers: Gabriel Byrne, John Malkovich, Gerard Depardieu, and Jeremy Irons. The most affecting are Byrne (who hides forbidden love of more than one sort) and Malkovich, who loses his son (Peter Sarsgaard!) and finds a surrogate in iron-masked Philippe (the other DiCaprio).

This was the directing debut of write Randall Wallace, who can run hot (Braveheart, We Were Soldiers) or cold (Pearl Harbor, Heaven Is For Real), and the actual visual style of the film feels stifling, like the people are moving from one soundstage to another. Camerawork is super-basic. The use of lighting/shadow in the prison sets are unimpressive, the scenes of high society feel... like you'd think they feel, with no real tweaks. Here's the masque at the ball. Here's the palace exterior with the trumpets and overdressed sycophants. I did like all of the hidden doors in the palace and wish there was more of that almost-silliness (I'm sure such palaces did have hidden doors, but then you want scenes that play that up for suspense).

[It's easy to imagine this material played from a Python-esque angle, since everyone assumes utmost seriousness at all times, except for Porthos, whose humor tops out at farting while Aramis prays. Classic goof.]

The story seems to carry all the beats of the story it wants to tell, with three of the four Musketeers having clear desires that get tested, but Irons' goals feel unimportant, and I don't think there's ever a sense that Louis the XIV is really truly dangerous. The film withholds the effects of his presumed tyranny (apart from one scene of public discontent). I wish his evils were more aggressively dramatized; he comes off more like a sleaze than a threat. What's funny is that DiCaprio is hard to read as a bully but very easy to read as a spoiled fop.

[You also want more scenes with the two DiCaprios interacting, not just for the fun of the effect, but because you'd think they'd have some strong opinions of each other.]

There's also a dopey touch at the end where Philippe stays in his mask during the entire climax, and you think, why on Earth would the film hide the face of its most bankable star at the dramatic apex of the film when we want most to see his reactions? And you figure it has to be because that way you can save money and time on having two identical characters in the same shot. You don't need blue-screen or trick photography when you can just stick a stand-in in an iron mask and dub in Leo's voice.

The flick's one of those weird examples of mediocrity, where it's hard to say the film does anything terribly wrong, but its positives feel muted, and the second the credits hit you're already forgetting it.

Submitted September 28, 2017 at 09:58AM by deadandmessedup http://ift.tt/2xO7HSH