Count of Monte Cristo, The

Portland Oregonian Kim Morgan

Utterly thrilling and enthralling, a commercial film that paces itself wonderfully, never allowing the action or romance to outweigh its story and characters. For mainstream adventure fare, that's quite an accomplishment.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

That tale gets a first-class Hallmark Hall of Fame treatment in Kevin Reynolds's swaggering The Count of Monte Cristo, which is old-form moviemaking at its best.

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

Reynolds, working in close harmony with cinematographer Andrew Dunn (Gosford Park), brings an infectious brio and an occasional sweeping grace to the classic trappings of Dumas.

Variety Joe Leydon

A lavishly mounted and appealingly old-fashioned swashbuckler with nary a trace of wink-wink irony or revisionist embellishment.

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

It's a heady mix of the earnest, the grave, and the frivolous. Wizardly director Kevin Reynolds even manages to condense into a single shot, with a wisp of humor, several of the hero’s long years in a dungeon without making them any less grueling.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

This is the kind of adventure picture the studios churned out in the Golden Age -- so traditional it almost feels new.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Performances by Jim Caviezel and Richard Harris make this a great adventure.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

It pays homage to the genre's most glorious days.

Miami Herald Charles Savage

An exhilarating visualization of Alexandre Dumas' classic novel of betrayal and vengeance.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

This delicious adventure of crude betrayal and elegant revenge is yummy even when reheated by director Kevin Reynolds.

San Francisco Chronicle Bob Graham

The stuff of high romance, brought off with considerable wit, too. People are going to love it.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Sail to the box office, swashbucklers. Dumas is back in style.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

While fleeting moments from Pearce and Luis Guzmán (as Caviezel's loyal servant) suggest the film might have been even more fun had they been allowed to loosen up a bit, the finished product still offers little cause for complaint.

Village Voice Jessica Winter

The week's guilty pleasure is The Count of Monte Cristo, a gorgeously photographed, sumptuously designed adaptation of the Dumas swashbuckler boasting the most ludicrous dialogue since director Kevin Reynolds's "Waterworld."

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The new Count moves with the smooth, plastic efficiency of a TV miniseries. Inspiration and originality may be in short supply, but the movie gets the job done.

Film Threat Michael Dequina

The film tells an engaging swashbuckler on its own terms, and that's what director Kevin Reynolds has done with this old-fashioned romp of revenge.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

As a revenge thriller, the movie is serviceable, but it doesn't really deliver the delicious guilty pleasure of the better film versions.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The best thing in The Count of Monte Cristo is Guy Pearce's snot-nosed hauteur. He gives this scoundrel some wounded edges, and frills as well.

USA Today Claudia Puig

For younger audiences drawn by the attractive actors, this might be their introduction to the Dumas epic. At least it's an effective and rousing version.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Don Irvine

The story stands up pretty well for a movie that's about 20 minutes longer than it ought to be, and has few of the action-beats that action-film audiences have grown accustomed to.

Boston Globe Loren King

Wolpert and Reynolds seem to be aiming for the ''Titantic'' audience at the expense of sophistication and historical relevance. It's too bad. The able cast, not to mention Alexandre Dumas, deserves better.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

A mediocre production that nevertheless will strike a deep and resonant chord with viewers.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

This is solid entertainment, and the time Caviezel and Pearce spent training for their sword fights pays off handsomely.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

The film's resolute indifference to fashion makes it, perhaps paradoxically, a refreshing piece of old-style entertainment, accompanied by a whooshing, trembling score by Edward Shearmur.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

With more buckling than swash, The Count of Monte Cristo is a good-looking, poorly acted washout.

New Times (L.A.) Robert Wilonsky

In the end, it's a film so short on style and verve it feels lifeless; audiences might feel imprisoned in the Château d'If, praying for escape or quick death. Thankfully, one need not tunnel out of a movie theater.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

This latest version, made with the MTV generation in mind, is arguably the least impressive of the filmed Counts.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

James Caviezel makes us care more about that innocent romantic, Edmond Dantes, than we may care to care about the rest of the picture, which entertains in fits and starts, with startling ruptures in tone.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

This seems to be a movie made by people who love the old classic movie swashbucklers but don't have a clue how to make or modernize them.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

More fun than Peter Hyams' "The Musketeer," and somewhat less so than "The Man in the Iron Mask," this is middling Dumas all the way.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Revenge may be sweet, but this is one "Monte Cristo" that leaves a sour taste.

Salon.com Jeff Stark

To say the film doesn't quite recapture the thrill of the novel is like saying that soda pop doesn't really have the same kick as heroin.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

This is the time of the year movie studios traditionally dump their mistakes into theaters -- and boy, did Disney make a whopper with The Count of Monte Cristo.