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THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK | PAGE 2 OF 2 D'Artagnan (Gabriel Byrne), now the leader of the new gang of Musketeers, is devoted to the king, as much as he dislikes him, partly because of the oath of loyalty he's taken and partly because he's long had the hots for the queen mum, Anne Parillaud. Meanwhile, the bad Leo keeps himself in form by assigning a young soldier (Athos' son) to a tour of duty that kills him off just so he can steal the soldier's luscious girlfriend (Judith Godreche). The chain of events that threatens his royal badness lurches into action when the good Leo is rescued by the Musketeers, who hope they can place him on the throne. Somewhere in there is a bit of folderol in which bad Leo's courtiers (all 18 of them -- this must be the most underpopulated costume epic ever; when Louis throws a ball, it looks like he's having a few folks in for cheese and crackers) are invited to chase a pig wearing a unicorn horn on its head. Oh, those zany French monarchs! But after that early moment of levity, "The Man in the Iron Mask" rolls downhill, fast. Not even the fancy sword play scattered throughout the picture is much fun. It's so badly blocked, you can barely tell who's slicing up whom. Irons and Malkovich deliver wax-figure performances that invite nothing but pity: Malkovich's line readings are particularly zombielike ("If Phillipe is in the Bastille, then to the Bastille we will go," he says in his numbed-out singsong), but the clunky dialogue he's saddled with doesn't help. Depardieu plays your stock lusty buffoon, but it's interesting to note that he pronounces D'Artagnan's name differently from the way every other character in the film says it. (Why didn't the cast pick a pronunciation and stick with it, preferably following the lead of the French guy, who, after all, should know?) And Byrne does his damnedest to lend depth and gravity to the troubled, lovesick D'Artagnan -- he's also the most handsome, with his dashing 17th century soul patch and sexy pageboy -- but mostly, he just looks stricken. And then there are the two Leos: Bad Leo has two expressions, a look of disdain and a grumpy frown, which he adopts interchangeably depending on his whim. (You know he's really pissed off when, after finishing off a potential assassin by stabbing him with a dagger, he flips his long tresses and snarls, "Jesuits!") Good Leo, on the other hand, wears a perpetual glow of bewilderment and wonder that seems to say, "You want me to be king? Golly!" You can't even call what DiCaprio delivers in "The Man in the Iron Mask" a performance -- it's more like a caricature, a cartoon-book reading of the duality of good and evil. DiCaprio is coasting here; he's playing nothing so much as a smooth-skinned dream boy, a virtually asexual matinee idol for the teen set. But I'm willing to bet that it won't be long before even teenage girls stop buying it. In "The Man in the Iron Mask," DiCaprio is simply the flavor of the month, and that's a drag. He seems to stiffen up in period roles, and he's especially ill-suited to play a king, since he doesn't have any heroic presence. But in the past, DiCaprio has shown plenty of wit and charm and subtlety, and he has a way of playing off -- and, maybe more important, to -- his screen partners that helps them shine as well. In that respect, he's shown a generosity and sensitivity that few of his contemporaries have matched. With any luck, he'll wake up from his spell and start being an actor again. Until then, he may as well keep the mask on. SALON | March 13, 1998  Stephanie Zacharek is a regular contributor to Salon.