The Mask of Zorro (1998)
Grade: 44
"The Mask of Zorro" is action-packed escapist fun, perhaps a guilty pleasure for some, but it is too shallow and ridiculous to be considered a good movie.
"The Mask of Zorro" begins in California in the year 1820, when it was still a Spanish possession. Anthony Hopkins is Zorro, masked action hero by day, aristocrat by night. Governor and bad-guy Stuart Wilson learns Hopkins' identify, and jails him, for good measure killing his wife and kidnapping his infant daughter.
Twenty years later, Hopkins escapes from prison, and being too old for the role, instructs enthusiastic bandit Antonio Banderas to take his place as Zorro. Banderas' brother has been killed by Matthew Letscher, who is Wilson's right-hand man. Meanwhile, Wilson has a plan of buying California from Mexico, with gold extracted via slave labor from a local mine. Hopkins seeks revenge on Wilson, Banderas seeks revenge on Letscher, and Banderas romances Catherine Zeta Jones, who is Hopkins' now-adult daughter.
What can be said that is positive about "Zorro"? The sets are excellent, especially the mine. The costumes are very good, and the endless action scenes are well choreographed. Zeta Jones is beyond beautiful, and the cast is energetic.
So, why isn't "The Mask of Zorro" (not to be confused with "The Mark of Zorro", the silent epic starring Douglas Fairbanks Sr.) a good movie? It's all action and no thought. The film is riddled with little problems. I'll just describe a few of them.
Hopkins spends twenty years in prison. The day Wilson returns from Spain and pays a visit looking for Zorro is the very day that Hopkins decides to escape. Well, if it was so easy, why didn't he break out twenty years earlier?
Both Hopkins and Banderas can fight multiple swordsmen at once. They can also outrun bullets. But when the duel their enemies one-on-one, they can barely hold their own. Hopkins and Wilson have numerous opportunities to kill each other, but don't. It is almost as if they prefer the other to stay alive, so as to make their own life more interesting.
Hopkins trains Banderas to be not merely a great swashbuckler and acrobat, but a gentleman as well. He must be a great teacher, since Banderas learns it all in just a few scenes. It took Professor Higgins an entire three-hour movie to train Eliza Doolittle.
Jones is a big fan of Zorro, and espouses pro-peasant attitudes, despite being raised by despot Wilson. It is amazing to me, but not to the writers, that she never takes her father's side, and falls for Zorro immediately.
Scenes typical of a Zorro movie, such as hapless soldiers fumbling in an attempt to catch Zorro, Zorro swinging from convenient ropes and chandeliers like Tarzan, and jumping two stories onto a stationary horse (Wouldn't that break the horse's back? Wouldn't that cause an, um, groin injury?) are present. It is probably impossible to make a great movie about Zorro, (or Godzilla, or Batman, for that matter) unless it is done as a parody, such as was done in "Zorro, the Gay Blade" some years back.
kollers@mpsi.net http://members.tripod.com/~Brian_Koller/movies.html
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