Zorro Part Deux
- Title: The Legend of Zorro
- IMDb: link
Way back in 1998 Zorro, the sword wielding, bullwhip snappin’, hero to the downtrodden of California, returned to the big screen in The Mask of Zorro. Now 7 years later a sequel has finally been made. So how is it? Well if you liked the first one you’ll probably enjoy this one as well.
Zorro (Antonio Banderas) has been swashbuckling his way through California as the champion of the people. California is in the final stages of joining the United States of America, and as promised Zorro is looking to retire. But wait, there is still evil afoot; despite the insistence of his wife Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) our hero cannot bring himself to hang up the mask.
The villains looking to stop California’s induction into the Union include a duke who is also a knight of a forgotten order and former flame of Elena’s Armand (Rufus Sewell), and dirty rotten good fer nuthin’ killer McGivens (Nick Chinlund) and his seemingly never ending posse of nameless thugs with guns and swords. There’s also a Confederate officer and a plot to help the South win the Civil War, the Pinkertons, Elena as a spy….(yawn) um, never mind.
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Capote is the latest biographical film that provides a wonderful juicy role for an actor, this time for Philip Seymour Hoffman. The film is well shot and pieced together, and cleverly cast with great performances. Yet….there is something missing. Although this is a very good film, almost completely overshadowed by Hoffman’s performance, it never becomes the great film it aspires to be.
There seems to be a belief in Hollywood that if you make an incomprehensible film that looks pretty and add a twist ending that shocks the audience but doesn’t fulfill the needs of the movie to explain what is happening then you’ve met your obligation to the audience. Stay is an unfathomable mess of a movie that meanders its way through flashbacks, reversals, timestops, and fancy camera tricks. All well and good, but in the end the film has nothing to say. It’s as if we’re watching a film student’s exercise in using different film and storytelling techniques, but the professor forgot to look over his script to see that there is no story there. I went to see Doom on the same day I saw Stay and folks that’s enough to drive most people out of movie theaters for years. I don’t mind taking one for the team now and then, but two in ten hours…well, I wouldn’t wish that on even my worst enemy—maybe Rob Schneider and Carrot Top.