Film Screening: The Count of Monte Cristo

Based on Alexandre Dumas’ classic tale, The Count of Monte Cristo (2002, rated PG-13) is a swashbuckling epic of treachery and retribution. Dashing young Dantes (Jim Caviezel is a guileless young sailor who plans to marry the beautiful Mercedes (Dagmara Dominczyk). But his life is shattered when the man he thought was his best friend, Fernand (Guy Pearce), decides he wants Mercedes for himself, and has Dantes accused of treason and thrown into a remote island prison. After six years of solitary confinement, Dantes is at the end of his tether, but a chance encounter with a fellow prisoner who tells him the location of a buried treasure gives him new hope. He educates himself in every subject and executes a daring escape plan, whereafter he reinvents himself as the fabulously wealthy Count of Monte Cristo and returns to Paris to exact meticulous revenge on Fernand and his cohort. Passion, melodrama, doublets and swordplay worthy of the original.