The Legend of Zorro

The Legend of Zorro (Director: Martin Campbell)



















Before Campbell directed The Mask of Zorro, and he did 1988's Criminal Law and 1994's No Escape before helping resurrect the Bond franchise with GoldenEye. After Mask of Zorro he went on to do Vertical Limit and Beyond Borders. A rather eclectic group of hits and misses. An army of successful writers came up with the story for this one: partners Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who have had their hands in tons of adventure films, including the previous installment and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Treasure Planet, The Road to El Dorado, Small Soldiers, Aladdin, and Shrek (should I mention Godzilla? Was that their fault?) and partners Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who wrote this year's The Island and tons of "Alias" episodes. Those two are credited with the screenplay. Based on the character brought to the world by Johnston McMully.

Not being much of a fan of The Mask of Zorro, I looked at the trailers for this sequel with contempt. I especially wondered why a movie like this was getting an October 28 release date. Not exactly a studio-dump date, but certainly not a big action picture's date either. Competing against the likes of Saw II, no less (I would have never thought a year ago I would have made that statement). But, this may be indeed be a good strategy. This reminds me of when the likes of Twister and The Mummy started pushing the summer season closer to April, and they succeeded in getting a couple of weeks of unchallenged success before Memorial Day. Of course, now, we get summer movies in April.

This story begins with Zorro (Antonio Banderas) claiming victory over some white devils who don't believe America should be open to inferior races like Hispanics (they took'r jahbs!). They especially don't like the idea of them helping vote California into the union, which also brings the ire of the South, who realize that this could swing the number of states against them in an imminent Civil War. Zorro (that's just his code name...he's really Don Alejandro de la Vega) returns home to his wife Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones, returning to the role which made her famous) and young son Joaquin (Adrian Alonso), and finds out from his wife that he's being a bad father by not quitting this superhero masquerade and missing his son's life.

The next day, Elena runs into some union government guys, who need her to seduce evil wine baron Armand (Rufus Sewell, who's never a good guy), and the next day Zorro is served with divorce papers. Independently, without each other's knowledge, they both find out that Armand is up to no good (here it has more to do with Fight Club than you will ever believe). How to stop him? Meanwhile little Joaquin, who doesn't know his father is Zorro (and quite idolizes Zorro, as any young kid would), shows some competency in butt-kicking as well.

This is one of those movies where it took me a long time to figure out whether I liked it or not. Ultimately, I started to like it quite a bit. The action scenes are very good (sometimes a tad ridiculous, but OK in a film like this). I like the idea that when Alejandro de la Vega is Zorro, he is suave and everything a man should be...except for being a father. As a father, he means well but is a liar and an alcoholic. The humor in this is very good. As the bad guy, Rufus Sewell continues to be a humorless dud. If I had a complaint, it would definitely be him. But if the filmmakers were looking for that kind of easy villainy, then they got it. It just would be nice to see ol' Rufus smile once in awhile (or crack an awful joke). Maybe he did once or twice in here but it nearly broke his face.

Quite honestly, a big surprise for me.