As a novel, Alexandre Dumas' The Man in the Iron Mask was a bit of a downer.
 
 Dumas' famous Musketeers - Aramis, Athos, Porthos and d'Artagnan - were quite literally on their last legs. Their attempts to free a mysterious prisoner from a royal dungeon and right all wrongs in France found them fighting to their deaths.
 
 By the time they got to The Man in the Iron Mask, Dumas and the Musketeers had run out of steam.
 
 Not so with Randall Wallace's new screen adaptation of The Man in the Iron Mask (opening today). It's a grand, swashbuckling epic that's wildly entertaining.
 
 This rip-roaring good yarn finds the Musketeers dealing with not one but two Leonardo DiCaprios.
 
 DiCaprio plays the lecherous, vain Louis XIV who ravishes young virgins while callously ignoring the plight of the starving masses.
 
 DiCaprio also plays Philippe, Louis's twin brother who has been languishing in the Bastille prison for six years. Because Philippe's existence was a major threat to Louis's reign of terror, the cruel monarch had his twin shackled in a mask that hid his famous countenance.
 
 The Musketeers must free Philippe and then somehow establish him on Louis's throne. It's no simple feat, as the Musketeers and the audience soon discover.
 
 Wallace wrote the screenplay for Mel Gibson's Braveheart. Once again, he is fascinated with honor, treachery and justice and once again he fashions a story of love, betrayal and adventure.
 
 It matters little that DiCaprio doesn't even attempt a French accent. What's important is that he effectively creates two distinct personalities for Louis and Philippe, making one worldly and evil, the other bewildered, innocent and frightened.
 
 By playing Porthos as an aging libertine, Gerard Depardieu provides much of the film's ribald, slapstick humor.
 
 Jeremy Irons' Aramis may have found religion but he still knows how to plot and fight when Louis' behavior threatens to destroy France.
 
 John Malkovich's Athos is the film's heavy. The weight of his son's death turns his heart to stone and his mind to revenge.
 
 Gabriel Byrne's d'Artagnan is effective because he is such an enigma. It's clear something drives his fierce loyalty to Louis but exactly what is the film's best plot twist.
 
 The movie is cleverly paced to build gradually to a series of pulse-pounding climaxes that eventually find Louis and Philippe squaring off.
 
 The chases through the secret palace corridors and through the dungeons of the Bastille are great fun. These moments recall the wonderful melodramatic thrills of the old Errol Flynn swashbucklers.
 
 With so much excitement and adventure and two DiCaprios packed in to one movie, Titanic may finally have encountered its iceberg.