THE MASK OF ZORRO (45)

Directed by: Martin Campbell

Starring: Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta Jones

The Pitch: An aged Zorro escapes from jail and plans revenge on the man who imprisoned him and killed his wife, all the while grooming a young bandit to succeed him.

Theo Sez: Is it a spoof? Is it a swashbuckler? No, it's the new improved (or at least inflated) Zorro, dedicated to the proposition that Bigger Is Better and devoting an entire mega-budget and a 136-minute running-time to making sure the audience is never, but never even for a nanosecond tempted to (ahem) catch some Z's. What's lost, unfortunately, is the emotional impact of a much simpler film like the 1940 MARK OF ZORRO, with its Scarlet Pimpernel-ish plot of the hero who pretends to be a foppish weakling while secretly fighting injustice (building up audience frustration as his loved ones treat him with contempt, then releasing it in a torrent of joy when he finally clears his name) ; and what's most significant is perhaps that the film does use that classic premise - but only for about ten minutes, before moving on to something else. Like many of the year's blockbusters it wants everything, tries to be all things to all people, moving from "old-fashioned" swashbuckler (Hopkins in the prologue, riding off into the sunset) to James Bond-style action movie to romantic melodrama to gross-out horror (decapitated heads) to parodic comedy with cartoon effects (a villain spitting out teeth after Zorro's punch) - the various strands clashing most ludicrously when Banderas sees off an entire platoon of mounted soldiers, leaping from horse to horse like Yakima Canutt, then falls flat on his face trying to mount his own horse ten minutes later, in a rather tedious bit of recurring slapstick. It's a kind of uncertainty that's probably inevitable for New Hollywood adventure movies (even RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK had its moments of self-parody), and perhaps for blockbusters in general (which, after all, have to aim for the widest possible audience) - but you can forgive and even enjoy it when presented in a laid-back, self-deprecating style (as in, say, LETHAL WEAPON 4). What's offensive here is how busy it all is, how determined - from the opening image of a "Z" in flames and the tapping of a flamenco beat - to be overwhelming, even though it's clear that it doesn't really know what it's doing ; it's the kind of film where the climax features not one but two duels going on at the same time (twice the fun! twice the excitement!). Never mind that, dramatically speaking, they of course cancel each other out.