Star: Catherine Zeta-Jones

Legend Of Zorro (2005) – Antonio Banderas, Rufus Sewell and Catherine Zeta-Jones

Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones return — they’re both pretty good actors. Banderas is especially good, given the right role, and this one fits quite well at times.

Rufus Sewell is impressive as the main antagonist here.

Adrian Alonso does alright as Zorro’s son too.

Inkeeping with the original, the actions scenes in this one are a bit slapstick and feature classical music similar to Indiana Jones in terms of notes and insruments but wildly disorganised and unharmonious in comparison. The action is a bit hollow and longwinded early on too, once they get into the swordfighting which is weird since this is gun country. Fortunately it’s over after a few dull minutes, then we get a nice stunt and a bit of humour and a bit of plot.

Although this movie is a bit one dimensional, it still has decent acting, script and general screenplay, so I give it a Bang Average rating, which is not bad — only one step down from the original — although this one would probably be rated slighly lower still, if viewed in isolation, since much of the entertainment value stems here from it being a follow-on to the story of the original.

The ending is not terrible except for the constant loud and annoying uncoordinated noise which lasts for at least 10 minutes during the battle scene near the end. Highly fast-forwardable. And after that, there’s a longwinded mushy bit of boring drama — also highly skippable.

Mask Of Zorro (1998) – Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta-Jones

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.

Entrapment (1999) – Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones

Entrapment (1999)

This movie gets off to a great start, with a fun Mission Impossible style action scene that was probably quite cutting-edge for its day. It then proceeds to be quite captivating with easy viewing for the first third of the movie, largely thanks to the overwhelming majority of screentime being occupied by interactions between the very excellent Sean Connery and the alright Catherine Zeta-Jones. This was a cutting-edge thriller in its day, with plenty of action and a bit of mystery, but you could put Sean and Catherine in a movie of any genre and they’d probably make it work remarkably well.

The action gets a bit tense yet drowsy near the middle, as they’re trying to build suspense with the help of irritating white-noise sound effects. Fortunately the script soon livens up again, and the story gets increasingly spicy. After a while though, it gets a bit slow and drama-oriented again, and this is generally the trend of the remainder of the movie – intermittently strong & weak with intermittent action & drama scenes.

The action gets quite intense towards the end, then gets clever at the very end, rounding off a movie that would have probably been Below Average with random actors but turned out to be Above Average thanks to Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Ving Rhames (the black hacker from Mission Impossible) also adds a lot of value to this movie, especially near the end. He initially plays Sean Connery’s supplier of gadgets, but eventually turns out to be an FBI agent.

Will Patton also does alright, as the boss of Catherine’s character early on in the movie, and one of the guys trying to catch her in the end.