The Count of Monte Cristo with Jim Caviezel is the worst adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' classic, and not because of the absence of Haydee, Benedetto, Maximilien, and Valentine, but because it assumes that, with a shallow and superficial approach and cheap love scenes, it can resolve the neuroses

Looking at the 2002 Count of Monte Cristo through a Freudian lens, the film is a failed attempt to balance ego and id, stumbling badly along the way. Edmond Dantès’ id, that cauldron of rage and vengeful desire, swallows any trace of ego that might mediate his actions with a shred of rationality. The trauma of betrayal, which in Freud’s view could drive introspection or sublimation, here becomes just a primal scream thinly disguised as an elaborate plan. The script doesn’t explore—it exploits: it uses pain as fuel for action sequences without ever probing the fragility of an ego crushed by an unchecked id. It’s a movie that thinks a banal scene with a fabric ring tying empty promises resolves neurosis, and in that, it fails miserably.

Freud would say that Dantès needed a couch, not a sword to play psychotic vigilante