A stately, highly ambitious and very impressively-photographed affair marred only by a distinct lack of pace, The Count Of Monte Cristo doesn’t quite attain the epic matinee swashbuckler status it’s aiming for, but it at least represents a dizzying improvement for director Kevin Reynolds, a man whose previous career reads like a Hague indictment of war crimes (scriptwriting credits for Waterworld, Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves and Red Dawn.

The sort of thing you half-expect Errol Flynn to turn up in any minute, this adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas classic plays a bit like Brotherhood Of The Wolf without the Hammer-horror excesses, and stays entertaining enough throughout without serving up any especial reasons to see it twice.

Caviezel and the increasingly impressive Neighbours refugee Guy Pearce spar off one another impressively as the Count and his sworn adversary, and though events can seem to hang quite motionlessness for certain stretches, the apocalyptic finale renders it worth the wait.

Richard Harris has a ball in a supporting role as an ageing prisoner attempting to tunnel an escape route, and Reynolds keeps a reasonably firm grip on the material.

Shot primarily in Ireland (as the producer said, ‘we wanted to be fiscally prudent’) the actual scenery is possibly the strongest thing about the film, an otherwise competent but unmemorable offering. We’ve been here before, and we will be again.