Anamaria Vartolomei in The Count of Monte Cristo (Jérôme Prébois/Samuel Goldwyn Films)

Proving there is still an audience for old-fashioned, grand-scale costume epics, Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patellière’s lavish, three-hour adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ classic 19th-century novel is already a worldwide hit. It’s the kind of movie that Hollywood studios used to make in its sleep—and probably should start to make again—but it also bucks recent trends. With so many streaming services available, a saga like this, told on such a large canvas, would usually become a multi-episode series.

Dumas’s novel was originally serialized in a French newspaper in 18 parts over a period of two years, from 1844 to 1846, so a bingeable miniseries would be an option. But the writers/directors decided to compress the wide-ranging plot and multiple character arcs into three hours. The result is a superbly paced drama that balances large-scale action with intimate moments. Dumas’s convoluted plot spans several decades, multiple countries, and various subplots, centering around Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney), a sailor honored for his heroism at sea but who is soon arrested on trumped-up charges as a Bonapartist (the novel, set between 1815 and 1839, has political overtones that are largely absent here) in church as he’s about to marry his cousin Mercédès (Anaïs Demoustier).

Edmond spends more than a decade in a maximum-security prison, where he meets fellow inmate Abbé Faria (Pierfrancesco Favino), a cultured man who teaches him languages as well as physical and mental discipline. After Faria dies in his cell, Edmond manages to escape to freedom and travel to the island of Monte Cristo, where Faria told him there was hidden treasure. Returning to France a rich man, Edmond disguises himself as the Count of Monte Cristo and proceeds to exact revenge on those who caused his years of incarceration and the loss of his loving Mercédès.

Dumas asks for much suspension of disbelief, which carries through the film. Edmond, as Monte Cristo, is disguised so no one recognizes him, except Mercédès (who admits to it later on), even though he looks much like he did earlier. Then there are the conveniently plotted links among the supporting characters: Mercédès marries Fernand (Bastien Bouillon), and their teenage son Albert (Vassili Schneider) falls in love with Haydée (Anamaria Vartolomei), the enticing young woman who is Edmond’s ward. There’s also André (Julien de Saint Jean), the illegitimate son of Villefort (Laurent Lafitte), the corrupt prosecutor who engineered Edmond’s imprisonment with Fernand’s involvement, who figures heavily in his vengeful plans.

Despite such disparate plot and relationship threads, Delaporte and de la Patellière stitch things together briskly, even if it plays out exactly as one would expect—but that’s part of the fun with such a satisfying adventure, even if the stickier parts of Edmond’s elaborate plan are not glossed over (an unexpected death throws a wrench in it). If the story occasionally drags, the impeccably stylish trappings never sag: Stéphane Taillasson’s opulent production design, Thierry Delettre’s ravishing costumes, Nicolas Bolduc’s sumptuous cinematography, Célia Lafitedupont’s razor-sharp editing, and Jérôme Rebotier’s rousing musical score.

The film builds to one too many dramatic climaxes—a duel is quickly followed by a drawn-out, tensely shot sword fight—but Delaporte and de la Patellière’s solid direction keeps the sweep of the epic story in sight (shot in France, Belgium, Cyprus, and Malta). Also, the impassioned performances from a large cast, led by Niney’s sympathetic if brittle Edmond and Demoustier’s heartbreaking Mercédès, make this version of Dumas’s timeless story far more entertaining than the most recent Hollywood adaptation from 2002, starring Jim Caviezel and Guy Pearce. This Count of Monte Cristo makes the term “costume epic” fun again.