Anthony Hopkins – Action Hero Movies

Anthony Hopkins plays an old Zorro here, and Antonio Banderas plays the new one who Hopkins trains. Catherine Zeta-Jones stars as the lead female and while neither Banderas nor Hopkins are quite like Sean Connery, and Catherine isn’t the one being trained up here, I feel like this movie still somewhat inspired Catherine’s duet with Sean Connery in Entrapment the following year.

This movie features some slightly nice training scenes although they don’t last long. It’s got nothing on Kickboxer or No Retreat No Surrender in that department.

The action is not bad in this movie although it’s a bit slapstick.

Although it can be a bit slow at times, the plot generally unfolds quite well to keep us intrigued and engaged with the help of high quality acting and screenplay too.

Overall I rate this movie Above Average since it’s got a good amount of goodness but hardly to an outstanding level and it’s quite diluted by the length of the movie.

The classical music in the battle scene near the end is reminiscent of Indiana Jones, just without the rhythm — it’s a bit random & messy but using similar notes & instruments.

If you loved this movie, you’ll be pleased to know there’s a sequel — Legend Of Zorro (2005) — which sees the return of Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

There’s a bit of a Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones vibe to this movie, which kicks in shortly after the first hour is done. The whole movie goes on for 2 and a half hours.

It’s good to see the return of Mark Wahlberg in the lead role, as Cade Yeager. This movie also features Anthony Hopkins as a supporting cast member called Sir Edmond Burton – he’s neither in a very major nor very minor role, but somewhere in between, and is listed second in the cast list in the closing credits, probably in part due to his level of fame. It’s good to see Josh Duhamel back as Colonel William Lennox. And the lead female this time called Viviane Wembley is played by Laura Haddock – she’s probably the best lead female in a Transformers movie thus far.

The best part of the movie is probably when Mark’s character cunjures a sword for himself long with the power to stop the swinging sword of one of the Earth-guardian transformers, thus saving Optmus Prime’s life when they’re about to execute him for betrayal even though he’s already realised his mistake. At that point, the guardians see Mark’s character has the amulet of King Arthur and they immediately recognise him as their leader. This only lasts a few seconds, but it’s probably the best part of the movie. The next best parts don’t last long either, which makes this movie quite thin considering it’s 2-and-a-half hours long. For this reason, even though this is one of the better Transformers movies – possibly even the best one to date – at least about as good as the first two – I’d still rate it pretty much Bang Average – on a par with most of the others, because the difference isn’t significant enough to justify distinct ratings, and the density of this one isn’t enough to justify a score of Above Average.

All Transformers movies ranked (up to this point)

If I had to rank all transformers movies thus far, I think I’d go 5, 4, 1, 2, 3. I’m confident in saying that movie 1 is slightly better than movie 2, and also that 5 is slightly better than 4, and that 3 is comfortably the worst of them all. But when it comes to 5 vs 1, that’s more of a style preference – do you prefer the originality of the movies 1 & 2, where the core concepts were first coined, or do you prefer the more powerful cast, magnificent script and less childish acting from movies 4 & 5? I’m tempted to go with the latter but it’s not a clear-cut decision by any means.