Leah Rozen


People Magazine is a Time Warner company (used by permission)
Talk about slasher films. Early on in The Mask of Zorro -- a stylish if old-fashioned swashbuckler best seen on a Saturday night with a giant tub of popcorn -- the eponymous hero, a dashing, sword-wielding Mexican nobleman (Hopkins), carves a bloody "Z" on the neck of the hissable villain (Wilson). Later on, with a few strategic flicks of his blade, the movie's second Zorro (Banderas) causes a beautiful lady's dress to fall to her ankles. Touché.

Two Zorros? Yep, and together they're better than one. In this latest twist on pulp-writer Johnston McCulley's venerable 1919 tale about the gallant masked avenger who fights corrupt Spanish rule in 19th-century California, you get suave Hopkins as classic Zorro and sinewy, younger Banderas as his protégé, upstart Zorro. Hopkins, having been imprisoned for 20 years by Wilson, escapes. He soon transforms Banderas, a lowborn thief, into Zorro Jr., and the two team up to beat Wilson, reclaim Hopkins's now grown daughter (Zeta-Jones), who was kidnapped as a baby, and, oh, yes, help oppressed peasants.

Too violent for small fry (kids under 8 don't need to see impalings or a cut-off head floating in a water bottle), Zorro is snappily directed by James Bond vet Martin Campbell (GoldenEye). But what this film really has going for it are full-blooded performances by its two leads. As Katharine Hepburn once said of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, "He gives her class, and she gives him sex." Ditto for these two. Hopkins classes up Zorro, while Banderas makes it sizzle.  

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