The Count of Monte Cristo

"Dantès" (Pierre Niney) is to be promoted to captain a ship for the wealthy "Morrel" (Bruno Raffaelli) after he disobeyed orders at sea and dived in to rescue a woman from drowning. This action immediately earns him the enmity of the now fired captain "Danglars" (Patrick Mille) and then just as his joy is to be complete with his marriage to "Mercedes" (Anaïs Demoustier) the soldiers arrive and he's implicated in a Napoleonic plot! The prosecutor, "de Villefort" (Laurent Lafitte) appears sympathetic and accepts his pleas of innocence, but when his close friend "Morcef" (Bastien Bouillon) is called upon to vouch for "Dantès" his own envious agenda takes hold and next, our naive young seaman is heading to the solitude of the Chateau D'If from which prisoners never escape. As the years of relentless frustration and boredom go by, his only conversation is a regular call from his jailers to see if he's still alive. Then a miracle occurs. Another prisoner has been tunnelling for years and inadvertently breaks through to his cell. It's this man - the Abbé Faria (Pierfrancesco Favino) - who gives him more than a little education as they try to dig their way to the sea wall. It's not to be for both, though, but armed with a knowledge that could change his life for ever, he manages to trick the guards and make it to land. It's now that the story of revenge hots up as we jump forward a few years and are introduced to the eponymous Count. He travels in style, has great wealth and style and is determined to avenge himself on the three men who framed him. As with himself, these men have gone on to great things with his denouncing friend now married to his love, "Danglars" owning a great trading fleet and the prosecutor now a powerful state official. "Dantès" has used his time well, assembling some allies whose roles in this unfolding drama are gradually revealed to us as politics, greed and jealousy stride to the fore of this classically designed production. The lavish costumes, stately homes and opulence of their lives contrasts well with the poverty and ruin faced by those collaterally damaged by the ambitions of men who cared but for themselves, and for whom our dashing and calculation gazillionaire is gunning. Nimey (who occasionally looked a bit like Kevin Kline here?) delivers that wronged and now Machiavellian characterisation especially well. There are also strong efforts from the younger characters "Albert" (Vassili Schneider); "André" (Julien De Saint Jean) and "Haydée" (Anamaria Vartolomei). It's essentially a thoroughly potent story of revenge, but it's as much about just how that can become a toxic influence that can eat into a man's soul and the challenge for "Dantès" and those around him whom he loves - however unwillingly on the surface - is not to become an obsessed demon every bit as ghastly as those he wishes to punish. It's this slow, dripping, evolution that the film delivers enthrallingly as we see this troubled man tread an increasingly conflicted line between love and hate. Revenge is said to be a dish best served cold, but like most things served cold - it doesn't keep for long.