The main appeal of the first film in the swashbuckling new adaptation of The Three Musketeers, Martin Bourboulon's D'Artagnan, was its humor and witty lines: Louis Garrel played a delightfully weary Louis XIII – complete with amusing facial expressions – and the three musketeers, Athos (Vincent Cassel), Aramis (Romain Duris) and Porthos (Pio Marmaï), soon joined by D'Artagnan (François Civil), were pleasantly given a new lease on life, with the script sending out a few vague signals to contemporary society. Released in cinemas in April, the film sold over 3 million tickets.

While these ingredients have certainly not disappeared in the second opus, Les Trois Mousquetaires: Milady (The Three Musketeers: Milady) – named after the free-spirited and devious woman imagined by Alexandre Dumas – the film struggles to break new ground and fails to carve out a strong presence for its female lead, once again played by Eva Green. Milady is, however, at the heart of the story, and the film sets out to unravel the knots of intrigue and mystery surrounding this woman's identity.

For the record, the previous feature film in the series – by the same director who made the biopic Eiffel (2021) – ended with the kidnapping of D'Artagnan's lover, Constance Bonacieux (Lyna Khoudri), laundry maid to Anne of Austria, the queen of France (Vicky Krieps), after the young servant overheard some highly-ranked individuals plotting against the monarch. In Milady, the fiery D'Artagnan will get no rest until he finds his beloved and unmasks the traitor.

Milady, who seems very close to Cardinal de Richelieu (Eric Ruf) and wants the Musketeers dead, gives off a powerful aura of wickedness. D'Artagnan, who saved her life in the first installment, is back to face this dangerous schemer in a series of epic battles: The pair engage in a game of deceptions, like two secret agents dueling with blunted blades, a role efficiently filled by French star Green, who played the Bond Girl Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale (2006). Yet it's all very smooth. While Milady and D'Artagnan take center stage, other protagonists are relegated to the background, such as Louis XIII, the Queen, the laundry maid, etc.

Like a spider weaving her web, Milady attracts and disarms her prey, as much by her strength as by her charm – both the sword and the bodice – while a dark secret emerges from the past. However, the film races along at such a pace – from intrigues to conspiracies, from chases to battles, and from La Rochelle to England – that the femme fatale finds herself carried away in a whirlwind of repetitive scenes: seductions, fights and escapes. One day as a brunette, the next as a redhead. Too many gallops and hooves, shots filmed from the level of the animal's feet; or from above, as seen from the sky.

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