Scene Selections — Geoff Carter: ‘Monte Cristo’ should be counted out

Friday, Sept. 13, 2002 | 9:18 a.m.

Geoff Carter is a Seattle based free-lance film critic and entertainment writer. Reach him at carter@pre2k.com.

Many a night have my movie industry-savvy friends and I discussed the sad case of Kevin Reynolds. Our feeling is that he's a good director ("Fandango," "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves") in a bad season ("Waterworld," "187"). We've wondered how and why he puts up with Kevin Costner, and we wondered how he would fare if he were to make a big budget adventure movie without Costner as star.

This year we got our answer, and it changed the course of our debate. "The Count of Monte Cristo," new on DVD this week (Touchstone Home Entertainment, $29.99), now has us wondering who conned who. It's not a bad picture, but like "Prince of Thieves" -- a fine action piece marred by Costner's flat Orange County accent -- it cuts several important corners, and tires itself out long before its final scenes.

The DVD's collateral materials, through no choice of their own, shed light on some of these shortcomings. Reynolds offhandedly comments that he didn't have the time to properly train stars Jim Caviezel and Guy Pearce for a climactic swordfight, which is probably why it appears in the film as a series of undercranked takes arranged in clumsy jump cuts; think a hip-hop video without the rhythm.

The writer of the screenplay, Jay Wolpert, bemoans the lack of "action pieces" in the original novel by Alexandre Dumas, and while he's all too happy to provide them, they're in the wrong places. And at least one of the scenes Reynolds cut for time was badly needed to more firmly establish the characters; more to the point, it would have put more Guy Pearce in the picture.

Pearce is terrific. His impact on American audiences came all at once, when his performance in Christopher Nolan's "Memento" inspired Blockbuster patrons to rent "L.A. Confidential" and "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert"; it is fittingly ironic that the Australian actor declared that he was done with Hollywood just as Hollywood discovered him.

In "Monte Cristo" Pearce plays the villainous Mondego as a fop with a cannon hidden behind his back. He's infinitely more interesting than Caviezel, who as the heroic Dantes evokes, um, Kevin Costner. Think of the way Alan Rickman pulled the rug out from under Costner in "Prince of Thieves." That's how much power Pearce has over the film's supposed star, yet Reynolds refuses to lean his way, even an inch: This is a hero's picture. Score one for Costner's influence.

Still, "The Count of Monte Cristo" is a solid rental, with gorgeous production design -- most of it was shot on location in Malta, and it's nice not to see computer-generated backgrounds in a history piece for the first time in who knows how long. The supporting cast -- notably Richard Harris and Michael Wincott -- does an immense job with the pithiest of Wolpert's dialogue.

And any movie with swordplay, even poorly choreographed swordplay, can't be all-bad. Films of this kind are the only instance in which the sword is more powerful than the pen.