I remember, back in 1998 when the movie was new, that there was quite a bit of a splash caused by The Mask of Zorro. At least one of my college friends dedicated a portion of her webpage (back when colleges offered their students a portion of the college webpage for themselves…do they still do that?) to her fandom for Catherine Zeta Jones since this was basically her breakout roll. The Daily Show used to do box office reports in Italian and made jokes about how similar the ending was to The Sixth Sense in that both had supporting characters dead by the end. Maybe it never got a sequel, but it was something I remember people talked about back then.
I only finally saw it this past week. It happens.
The movie opens in 1821 as the War of Mexican Independence is winding down, and Spanish governor of California Don Rafael Montero (Stuart Wilson) is looking to set a final trap for the infamous masked swordsman Zorro before he’s sent back to Spain. He seems to fail as Zorro swoops in and makes him look foolish yet again, but this time, Montero has a line to follow. It seems Zorro is really the wealthy Don Diego de la Vega (Anthony Hopkins), and Montero follows him back to his home to arrest him. Montero is smitten with Vega’s wife (Julieta Rosen), but during the arrest, she is accidentally killed by an errant pistol shot. Montero takes Vega to a dungeon while adopting the Vegas’ infant daughter Elena for himself.
20 years later, and two of Zorro’s biggest fans, a pair of brothers one of whom is based on a historic figure, are running around playing Robin Hood. The historic brother is killed by one Captain Harrison Love (Matt Letscher), but the surviving brother escapes with Zorro’s old medallion to plot revenge. That fellow is Alejandro Murrieta (Antonio Banderas), and he’s in luck (sort of). Don Diego has finally managed to escape prison, and Love is working for the returned Montero, it means that Vegas has someone he can train to become the new Zorro, allowing both men to get revenge. And it doesn’t hurt that a grown-up Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is also back, there to provide the new Zorro with a love interest and her actual father with a chance to reconnect with the infant stolen from him all those many years before. Besides, Montero’s plot is already pretty evil, and someone will have to stop him. Why not a pair of Zorros?
I had a lot of fun with this one. This may be the closest the 90s ever got to replicating the swashbuckling feel of an old Errol Flynn movie. During the many fight scenes, there’s a feel that anything and everything in the area can and will be used by either Zorro to fight his opponents. It helps that Banderas and Hopkins both seem to know what they’re doing. It also helps that the movie doesn’t take itself entirely seriously. There’s a sense of humor to a lot of what’s happening here, at least for the good guys. The villains are played pretty straight.
That said, it still looks like a very late-90s action movie. It’s the not the grim or dark sort of movie that would come with the 2000s, and it keeps its heroes good and its villains evil. There’s a lot to admire about the movie, and while I can’t say why it did or didn’t get a sequel, I will say there’s something nice about a movie that tells its entire story in one go, with a California that may no longer need a Zorro but has one on standby if necessary.
Grade: B+
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