THE MASK OF ZORRO
A film review by Bradley Null
Copyright 1998 Bradley Null
With all the recent rehashing of old movies and T.V. series, (anyone catch the new TARZAN movie?) you wouldn't be blamed if you didn't expect too much from this one. But on the bright side, this one does have Anthony Hopkins taking on an entirely new ethnicity, which is always interesting.
Hopkins's performance aside, THE MASK OF ZORRO somehow managed to keep itself afloat despite steamrolling through almost every action movie cliche in the books. In retrospect, ZORRO never loses its freshness precisely because we are continually presented with new formations of the action movie spectacle in a genre we haven't seen much of in a while. Part ROBIN HOOD, part disaster movie, part young warrior in training movie, another part ROBIN HOOD, ZORRO seems to take the most classical elements of all of these action genres and put them together in a way that we know we've seen it all before, yet still enjoy the ride.
None of this is to say that THE MASK OF ZORRO is a film masterpiece. Despite a strong performance by the hit-and-miss Antonio Banderas and an enchanting turn by Catherine Zeta-Jones as the princess/noble woman/whatever with a heart of gold, this film subjugates emotion to action. So don't expect to be swashbuckling out of the theater.
RATING: ****
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: Martin Campbell Producer: Doug Claybourne, David Foster Writer: John Eskow, Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio Starring: Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones
http://www.spe.sony.com/movies/zorro/
-Christopher Null / null@sirius.com / Writer-Producer / http://www.filmcritic.com
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