THE MASK OF ZORRO (1998)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

I only have one problem with MASK OF ZORRO: a statement on a DVD extra to the effect that this is the "definitive" Zorro movie. MASK, adroitly directed by Martin Campbell right after his success on GOLDENEYE, may well be one of the five best Zorro films ever made, though that's not exactly an elite class, given the paucity of really good efforts. But there's no way that the definitive Zorro could be about anything but the original career of Don Diego de la Vega.

One can certainly claim that MASK is the best rebranding, though. For some reason, even though some franchise characters keep the exact same identities no matter how much time passes-- I'm thinking here of The Phantom, who had a rationale by which New Coke versions of the hero could have continually replaced the old versions-- there actually have been a fair number of derivative Zorros, starting out with 1925's DON Q SON OF ZORRO and proceeding on through late entries like 1949's GHOST OF ZORRO.

So in 1821, Don Diego (Anthony Hopkins) attempts to retire from his costumed role, having so embarrassed the regime of Don Rafael (Stuart Wilson) that the latter has been recalled to Spain, at the same time that Spain has ceded California to Mexico. Rafael though manages to expose Diego as Zorro, and as a result of his actions, Diego is consigned to prison, his wife is accidentally slain, and his daughter Elena is kidnapped by Rafael, who for sheer spite raises the child to think she's Rafeal's offspring.

Twenty years later, Diego gets free but deems himself too old to seek vengeance. He encounters Alejandro Murrieta (Antonio Banderas), a bandit whose brother Joaquin was callously slain by Captain Love (Matt Letscher), who later becomes bonded to Don Rafael when the latter returns to California. Diego decides to mold the young, vengeance-motivated into a New Zorro. Yet Diego wants more than just revenge. He wants to find out Rafael's endgame, the reason he's returned to California to court the local dons. Further, the former governor brings with him the grown Elena (Catherine Zeta Jones), and naturally Diego hopes to acquaint his daughter with her true parentage.

New Zorro makes his first appearance, throwing throw the fear of The Fox into Rafael by outfighting twenty soldiers in a bravura action-scene. But Diego can only learn Rafael's plans by infiltrating the aristocratic world of the California dons, and so Former Zorro uses his knowledge of Spanish aristocracy to create a false persona for Alejandro, so that he can better spy on the main villain. This Alejandro accomplishes, though the main reason for the double identity is so that Elena can feel ambivalence toward both handsome but effete Alejandro and the dashing mystery-man Zorro. 

Elena is, to be sure, a Zorro-girlfriend for a post-feminist era. Instead of just mooning over both men, she catches Zorro stealing Rafael's secret plans and attempts to defend her "father" by swordfighting the masked bandit. Since she gives a good account of herself, there's no shame in Zorro's light-hearted victory, not least because the viewer knows they're made for each other. Oh, and yes, she eventually finds out her true parentage.

The secret plan, by the way, is pretty clever for an adventure-film designed as a summer blockbuster, and since it involves the rich exploiting the poor, it provides a fine sociological myth for New Zorro. Whereas the original prose hero was a young Spanish grandee seeking to bring other, more sinful aristocrats into line, Alejandro is a lower-class guy seeking to "fight the power." But by the time the movie's over, he's absorbed all the refined qualities of Diego, making him as close to the original as a rebranding can get.

Incidentally, I didn't initially know why the writers gave the hero's dead brother the same name as the legendary, maybe-not-purely-historical bandit Joaquin Murrieta. I subsequently learned that some pundits believe that the dime novel relating Murrieta's criminal career might have influenced Johnson McCulley's original pulp tale. This sounds like unsupported speculation to me, but I suppose the story lends an extra level to the mythology of the pre-eminent masked swashbuckler.