Greetings from Lithuania.So as the first post-Titanic movie staring Leonardo DiCaprio "The Man in the Iron Mask" (1998) wasn't his best chose, at the moment Leo doesn't make mistakes like this, but at the moment he did, and this film was born. It is a not a bad movie by any means, it is pretty fun and entertaining to be honest, a true guilty pleasure to see it once (i saw it twice during the first two years after its release). Performances were pretty good in this flick, especially by Jeremy Irons. The set design was also good, and that is pretty much all i can remember about this movie after seeing it twice (!), although it was more then 17 years ago. The story itself was also not bad at all, but the script failed at many moments as well as directing.Overall, "The Man in the Iron Mask" does its job (or should i say did it back then) as a guilty pleasure movie for a one evening, but don't expect great movie with Leo if haven't seeing it yet. Nice one time flick, nothing else and nothing more.

This movie was recently aired on a local TV station. I was passing by the channel and figured I'd watch it since I missed it in the theater. That, and there wasn't anything else on worth watching.I guess at first I thought it odd that someone would cast Brooke Shields as King Louis XIV, but wanted to watch to see if she was somehow able to pull it off.About 20 minutes into the film I thought her acting was a little odd, even for her. So I checked the movie info on screen and discovered it wasn't Brooke Shields, but rather, Leonardo DiCaprio.After that, all suspension of disbelief was gone. It was replaced with utter amazement at how much DiCaprio looked like Shields.

The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas! All for one and one for all! Who can forget them? Their names are carved into our collective memories -- D'Artagnon, Athos, Paramus, Dopy, Goofy, Donner, Blitzen, and Rudolph! In this story, helas, the four musketeers are aging, like gunfighters, and have gone their separate ways. Gabriel Byrne, as D'Artagnon, remains in service, devoted to King Louis XIV. (That's Louis the Fourteenth, also known as The Sun King; cf., The Beatles.) Jeremy Irons as Aramis has become a Jesuit priest who doesn't much like the king. John Malkovich is Athos, whose much loved son, Raoul, the king has sent off to war to be killed, in order to have his way with Raoul's fiancée. Athos is pretty bitter. Gerard Depardieu is the comic Porthos, the wine-swilling lover of life who despairs as aging cripples his diverse enthusiasms. "I'm going to hang myself as soon as I'm sober." All of the musketeers are well served by the players.But who is this king anyway, the one that everybody dislikes so much except D'Artagnon and the assorted terrified subjects? The population at large is not so obsequious. They're starving and the king sends them rotten fruit that's been rejected by the army now fighting Holland.I'll tell you who the king is. He's Leonardo DiCaprio, that's who. He's not only a cruel and selfish king but the poor guy, no matter which of two opposing roles he plays -- the sneering king or the pathetic waif -- looks and sounds like a recent graduate of some high school in St. George, Utah. A huge hole appears on the screen whenever he speaks. He turns the Musketeers into the Mouseketeers.The plot is too twisted with intrigues and mixed identities and the like. It can't be described in detail. DiCaprio plays twin brothers. One is the evil king and the other is the nice man in the iron mask, who is liberated and substituted for the bad king. It gets pretty tense and enjoyable, watching people sneak around, grieving and plotting. One particularly delightful moment has the bulky Gerard Depardieu in a hay stack. His head emerges from the straw and he moans, "Ach, it's no good. I can't do it anymore." And then the head of a pretty young lady arises from the hay and reassures him. Depardeiu shakes his head. Another pretty face appears from under him. Then a third.The action scenes are fun, combining ancient matchlocks with period smallswords. None of the actors have any skill in fencing so the scenes are subject to speedy editing and a lot of brute force is used. No guts or gore, however.It's an old-fashioned adventure yarn with a budget as lavish as the decor of the palace. It's strictly a commercial enterprise with no attempt at naturalism or genuine tragedy. The original music by Nick Glennie-Smith is imitation baroque, so as not to be too alien to modern ears. The lighting and photography are in the bright classic style, and never mind the candelabras. None of it was shot at Versailles but the impression is effective. The editing challenges no one. The camera wobbles not.

This is one of Randall Wallace's better movies. Although not as good as Braveheart, it is better than Pearl Harbor and We Were Soldiers. It has a great cast; it is amazing that Jeremy Irons, DiCaprio, John Malkovich and Gerard Deperdieu were able to all star in the same movie. However, I have always been a History fan; and the IMDb profile claims that I like biography, history and war movies above all. Perhaps such a bias causes me to give this film a more generous rating.One thing the film did is to cause me to question issues of legitimacy. The film is, of course, not historically accurate. It is obviously romanticized. But in real life, there had actually been a man in the Iron Mask in the Bastille prison. In real life, there had been tension between Jesuits and kings. And the movie alludes to events that would later portend the French Revolution (i.e. starving hordes in Paris). In real life, King Louis XIV also declared himself to be in charge of the French Royal Council in 1661; and the film starts off in 1662. The very fact that a 'bad' king is replaced by a 'good' king may be a reference to the latent belief (at least on the part of Alexandre Dumas) that Louis XIV had been corrupt and that so had been his Royal Council. After all, Wikipedia claimed that Louis XIV's reign had actually not been peaceful during the later part of his years.However, the film was enjoyable. After watching the 1994 Disney version of the Three Musketeers as a kid years ago, it was interesting to see the Three Musketeers again in their older years. And just because they were older obviously did not mean they did not have problems. In fact, the film demonstrates the reality that their lives had gotten more difficult. The film also touches on other important issues that may cause heated debates. The film seemed to argue that the wars fought consumed the resources of the French peasants and urban workers. Rather than competing over scarce resources, the countries engaged in war fought for glory and ideological reasons. This may be true, but I'm not sure to what degree it is also a romanticized notion. Historians will probably duke it out.I would recommend this film and would even do so for those who are not fans of history.8/10