The Count of Monte Cristo

This umpteenth version of Dumas' Napoleonic-era revenge novel makes a preposterous, expansive and self-conscious attempt to resurrect the historical spectacular. As the Count - a dashing but lowly innocent whose years imprisoned at Château d'If only reinforce a cold determination to be revenged on Fernan (Pearce), his treacherous aristocratic pal - the essentially interior Caviezel brings an aura of metaphysical doubt entirely at odds with the psychologically facile narrative drive of the text. Playing the omniscient priest, the hero's fellow prisoner and subsequent tutor and fencing master, Harris knows hokum when he's cast in it, and gives a surprisingly spritely, quietly uproarious turn. Likewise Guzmán, as loyal servant Jacopo, scorns any notion of softening his Hispanic vowels. These are small consolations, however.