You Love to See It: The Mask of Zorro (Patreon)

The Mask of Zorro, which in 1998 came hot on the heels of the ultra-macho action movies of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and just before the modern wave of snarky, factory-produced blockbusters, is a perfect encapsulation in film of the experience of being eight years old and eating an ice cream cone. It’s a mess, it’s nothing but sugar, and it’s unquestionably the highlight of the day. There’s no deep message here. There’s nothing challenging about it, nothing particularly bold or brilliant; it’s just an adventure movie with unshakable bones, an extremely committed cast (Matt Letscher as the prissy, ghoulish Captain Love, jaguar-print saddle and all, is unforgettable), and a scene in which a sneering aristocrat gets crushed to death by a bunch of gold bars he forced his slaves to mine.

The movie’s easy, natural humor and the magnetic charm of leads Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta Jones playing alongside the crackling supporting duo of Anthony Hopkins and Stuart Wilson provides a perfect layer of romance and revenge to conceal the brutal technical proficiency of its action scenes. Banderas spent six months training with both the U.S. Olympic fencing team and legendary fight choreographer Bob Anderson (later of Lord of the Rings fame), while Zeta Jones and Hopkins worked ten-hour days alongside him for two months. The resulting sword fights are fanciful, but with a rigorous core of actual skill, and Anderson’s blocking is much more like something out of an energetic Hong Kong martial arts flick than either the militarized brutality of action in the ‘80s and ‘90s or the sterile, visually incoherent mass destruction of the 2000’s. 

It doesn’t always hang together perfectly. The time of day is prone to changing abruptly, some of the Banderas/Jones romantic teasing doesn’t quite know where to land in terms of tone, and it’s pretty clear a few major scenes wound up getting cut. But who cares? The whole thing clips along beautifully in spite of its nearly two-hour and twenty-minute running time. James Horner’s score is big, forceful, and incredibly distinctive, pushing past stereotypes to hit a few genuine home runs (the piece which plays during the climactic duels, for one). It’s catharsis, dessert, and an adrenaline fix all in one, and if as a whole it’s nothing more than the sum of its parts, well, its parts fuckin rule.