East meets West with less than stellar results in The Musketeer, a generic, dispirited adventure movie that only comes alive during a series of kinetic, inventive fight sequences choreographed by Hong Kong action specialist Xin Xin Xiong. Clumsily shoehorning those setpieces into a creaky swashbuckler that wouldn't feel out of place on a '50s double bill, The Musketeer stars soap-opera veteran Justin Chambers as a gifted swordsman who, after his parents are brutally murdered, aspires to become a musketeer. After years of rigorous training, he arrives in Paris to discover that the musketeers have hit a professional and personal nadir after being robbed of their power by sinister Cardinal Richelieu (Stephen Rea), who distrusts their allegiance to France's weak king. Rallying the troops, Chambers takes on Rea and eyepatch-sporting henchman Tim Roth while still finding time to woo obligatory love interest Mena Suvari and display an eerily Jackie Chan-like ability to turn found objects into weapons of destruction. Of course, much of the pleasure of Jackie Chan movies is derived from knowing that Chan himself is actually performing much of the derring-do onscreen. But whenever Chambers pummels a foe with a chair or swings from a ladder, the action is frustratingly obscured by his flowing hair and elaborate costumes. His lack of charisma is even more devastating. An apparent graduate of the Keanu Reeves Institute For Monotonal Pretty Boys, Chambers isn't likely to make anyone forget Chris O'Donnell (who took on the same role in 1993's The Three Musketeers), let alone Errol Flynn. Xiong's fight choreography is predictably impressive, if clumsily integrated, but here, as usual, context is everything. In The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the use of Hong Kong-style action choreography added a layer of excitement to already riveting narratives. In The Musketeer, Xiong's work is not only the frosting, but the cake, as well.