director
Martin Campbell
screenwriters
John Eskow
Ted Elliott
Terry Rossio
story by
Ted Elliott
Terry Rossio
Randall Jahnson
based
on characters created by
Johnston McCulley
producers
Doug Claybourne
David Foster
cinematographer
Phil Meheux
music
James Horner
editor
Thom Noble
cast
Antonio Banderas (Zorro)
Anthony Hopkins (Don Diego)
Catherine Zeta-Jones (Elena Montero)
Stuart Wilson (Don Rafael Montero)
L.Q. Jones (Three-Fingered Jack)
Matt Letscher (Captain Harrison Love)
Maury Chaykin (Prison Warden)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 136m
u.s.
release: July 17, 1998
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
Official
site
other martin
campbell films
reviewed on this website:
- goldeneye
|
The
Mask of Zorro is the
antethesis of the summer blockbuster as we've come to know it
lately: no CGI (well, none that I noticed), relatively few explosions
(two), action scenes you can easily follow (this is fast becoming
a lost art). In short, it's everything I want from a hot-weather
adventure movie. Well ... almost everything. Zorro is
crisp and competent and often witty, but it only does what it's
supposed to do; it's never quite inspired or exhilarating, despite
the deft stuntwork and acting.
The movie begins in the early 1800s, when the nobleman Don Diego
de la Vega (Anthony Hopkins) is drawn to a public execution.
This nobleman, of course, is Zorro, protector of the weak and
poor; he short-circuits the execution and barely escapes with
the help of two urchins (he's getting too old for this). Zorro's
nemesis, the evil Don Rafael Montero (Stuart Wilson), tracks
him down to his hacienda, killing his young wife and stealing
his baby daughter before tossing him in jail.
Cut to twenty years later. The urchins are now grown men; one
of them is Alejandro Murrieta (Antonio Banderas), who watches
his brother die at the hands of a vicious Army captain (Matt
Latscher). In a tavern, Alejandro meets Diego, who has recently
escaped from prison. The old Zorro sees that the time has come
for a new Zorro. He trains the undisciplined Alejandro in swordplay
and manners.
Zorro seems intended as the start of a franchise, and
I'm all for it in theory: a series of adventure movies (as opposed
to action movies) whose thrills depend more on ingenuity and
stuntwork than on special effects. Such a series might fill the
void left when Steven Spielberg retired Indiana Jones. But Zorro's
director, Martin Campbell, is no Spielberg. In GoldenEye,
Campbell showed a solid grasp of action-movie mechanics. What
he lacks is the wit and deviltry that surprise a laugh out of
you and kick the action up a notch -- turn a good sequence into
a great one.
A fencing bout between Banderas and the Welsh actress Catherine
Zeta-Jones, as Diego's long-lost daughter Elena (whom Don Rafael
claimed as his own child), shows what a good Zorro movie should
be. As the mutually attracted Zorro and Elena cross swords, each
impressed by the other's moves, the scene develops a playful
erotic rhythm. (It's too bad Campbell cheapens it by having Zorro
cut away Elena's clothes -- Zorro should be more chivalrous than
that. It would've been a better gag the other way around.) And
there's a nicely understated scene between Elena and Diego, who's
posing as Alejandro's servant. Hopkins, a master of repressed
emotion, can stand there and do nothing and still make you feel
how much he loves this daughter who has no idea who he is.
Aside from those scenes, Elena is essentially secondary to the
action, and we don't really get a sense of the relationship between
the two Zorros. The movie is a bit rushed -- weeks of training
are telescoped into a montage -- and the structure is lumpy.
There's too much set-up at the beginning, and I began to feel
that the whole double-Zorro idea was unnecessary, a stunt to
get Anthony Hopkins in the movie. He's fine here, and Banderas
has some good light moments, but he's covered in facial hair
too much of the time -- he could be anyone.
And the double-revenge plot is boredom squared. I kept flashing
back to The Princess Bride: "Hello. My name is Inigo
Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die" -- and it
was done better then. Rob Reiner and William Goldman struck the
perfect balance between picaresque goofing around -- the parodic
derring-do of Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks -- and emotional
payoffs. This Zorro seems too locked into its revenge
plot, like Lethal Weapon with swords; it needs more scenes
that are there just for the sheer playful hell of it. Instead
it has needlessly violent fight scenes (Zorro slicing a Z into
his enemies loses its charm when you can see the blood) and even
severed body parts in jars. Zorro needed the light touch
of Robert Rodriguez (Desperado),
who was going to direct it until budget disputes with exec-producer
Spielberg forced him out. Knowing Rodriguez, he probably wanted
to make the movie cheaper and shorter and funnier. Instead, it's
expensive and long and not nearly as funny as it should have
been. |