Sep 292005
 
three reels

Don Alejandro de la Vega’s (Antonio Banderas) unwillingness to retire from being Zorro strains his marriage to Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and his relationship with his son, Joaquin (Adrian Alonso).  After receiving divorce papers, things get even worse, as a group of gunmen pressure locals to sell their land, a huge explosion rocks the woods, and Elena has started seeing a French Count (Rufus Sewell).  Somehow, these things all tie together, and if Zorro can sober up, he’s the man to find out how.

With Catherine Zeta-Jones in a corset, Antonio Banderas jumping from rooftop to rooftop, and first-class swordplay, it would be impossible to make a bad film. Banderas and Zeta-Jones have enough charm to carry a film about chartered public accountancy. These are movie stars, in the old sense of the word: Personalities that are immediately likable, captivating, and light up the screen.  Humor appears second nature to them, and passion…oh yes!  Zeta-Jones may be the finest screen-kisser in Hollywood history. Banderas might do OK there too, but honestly, I wasn’t paying much attention to him at the time.

And as the stars, they do carry this film, carry it like an enormous weight, slowing them down. Given all of the huge advantages, including good acting from the entire cast, decent (if obviously fake in places) special effects, sweeping sets, and the before mentioned swordplay and stars, this is startling weak film. The flaws are in directing, writing, and editing.

Some things are simple.  If you are making a swashbuckler, don’t stick a kid in it. It really is that simple. Luckily, Adrian Alonso does a fine job, and the scenes where the boy is jumping about, particularly battling with his schoolmaster, work surprisingly well.  The problem is when he isn’t active, as all the fast-moving fights and witty dialog (i.e. the heart of any swashbuckler) slow to a crawl; everyone discusses the child, argues about the child, wonders about the child, feels guilty about the child, rides to rescue the child, checks on the child, and generally dwells on child-rearing instead of swashing and buckling.

But of course, The Legend of Zorro is built around the kid, as this is a “family film,” and insufficiently trained writers don’t understand that children like movies even when they don’t star a child.  The family-friendly focus also guts one of the basic features of a swashbuckler.  As is explained in the The Mask of Zorro by the Zorro-in-Training to the Old-Zorro, when asked if he knows how to use a sword: “Yes. The pointy end goes into the other man.”  But not in this movie.  No one gets the pointy end. People fence for a bit, and then someone gets hit on the head by a sword hilt or punched or kicked.  And, like in superhero films, massive impact damage does no real harm. Two men get repeatedly hit with shovels (accompanied by 5.1 booming “wack!”), but it hardly bothers them.  Sure, the filmmakers were going for a PG rating, but the G-rated Adventures of Robin Hood had no trouble running a few people through (though in these more conservative times, that staple of my childhood would probably get a PG-13; sigh).

The plot concerns statehood for California and stealing land and building a railroad track and a secret society and an invention, and I didn’t care about any of it.  Zorro’s a good guy.  So is Elena. I just wanted to know who the bad guys were and that’s that.  Instead, half the movie plays out like a rather slow espionage thriller. Stranger still, it has a few spaghetti western moments, which are far too serious for the lighter scenes and gags that fill most of the film.

Martin Campbell directs as if he’s had eight cups of coffee. Even when the characters are calmly standing in one place, the camera frenetically dances about.  With such excellent stunts, I’d like to give Campbell a few downers, pull the camera back so that I can see what’s going on, and keep it in one general location for more than a few seconds.

With the exception of the non-fatal sword fights, most of the flaws could have been (and could still be) corrected in editing.  Chopping twenty or thirty minutes of unnecessary exposition, child-rearing guilt, and yawn-inducing subplots, and then choosing a few wide shots over close-ups, would create an engaging film.  Well, I guess I can hope for a Special Edition, Non-Director’s Cut DVD in 2006.

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