Alexandre Dumas may be the most popular French writer in cinema, with hundreds of credits to his name based on his classic adventure stories like The Three Musketeers, Man in the Iron Mask, The Corsican Brothers and, of course, The Count of Monte Cristo. Improbably interpreted in the silent era, multiple times, as a short until Henri Pouctal made a fifteen part serial, this massive tome has been rendered time and time again, with varying degrees of fidelity, including a Hanna-Barbera cartoon and an animé. The Japanese have had their way with it, as have the Indians.

The story, as the kids say, is a banger.

A faithful rendering would take over 30 hours but fortunately no one has read the eighteen volume novel so no one complains about the missing parts.

The story, in broad strokes, is that the hero, Dontes, is framed for treason and thrown into a dungeon forever, but his isolation is broken by another man, who has an escape route worked out and also a line on some Templar treasure and, long story short (heh), Dontes escapes after fourteen years, assumes the identify of the Count of Monte Cristo, and then embarks on an elaborate plan of revenge.

His girl, believing him dead, ends up marrying the friend who betrayed and framed Dontes.

There’s a lot of room for fights, confrontations, plotting, swashbuckling, tense dinner parties and sick burns, as well as reflection on the nature of revenge. It would be easy to have Dontes turn into an actual villain, so hard is his heart, but fortunately, the villains who arranged for imprisonment didn’t stop doing evil just with him. By constantly reminding us of their perfidy, we can endure (and even enjoy) the various comeuppances our protagonist arranges.

This French picture came in at 42M Euros (which is about the same in US dollars) and looks good, if a little on the dark side. Literally, dark. The plot also strays into dark territory but, remarkably, doesn’t wallow in it. This is at heart a solid adventure story which gives a good nod to the dangers and bleak possibilities, but ultimately knows the adventure and romance elements are the key to this story’s endurance.

At a three hour runtime, it moves along at a breakneck pace, and many of the elements of the plot are implied. But it all works.

Even though it’s been done dozens of times before, it seems remarkable that it could be done today, and well.