Six of the best - 1998 -
part 3
The Truman Show
Saving Private Ryan
Elizabeth
Shakespeare in Love
Mask of Zorro and
Out of Sight
I'm a sucker for a good swashbuckler. Coarse acting, notwithstanding. Some of the great cinematic moments are afforded by Flynn's Robin Hood, Granger's Scaramouche and Lancaster's Crimson Pirate, to pick out but three examples of the art. But, of late, they've been a bit thin on the ground, the swashbucklers, supplanted by the even more coarsely acted but ultimately stupid modern shoot-em-ups and chop sockey movies of the likes of Van Damme, Stallone, Seagal, Bronson and co. What's missing from the latter that was present in the old time movies was the sense of fun, the joie de vivre of the adventure in which real romance has its part.
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The Princess Bride caught the right flavour and the Indiana Jones movies were close but other contemporary attempts have missed by a long way, none more so than big-budget tries like the Costner Robin Hood.
In the light of that string of failures, it was interesting to see another of the movies adapted from a 1960s' television show really work. The Zorro story is the stuff of great movies and the makers of this version have taken the best parts from the Tyrone Powers' movie and the Guy Williams television series, before adding their own twists. And, for many reasons, it works.
Partly it is because the script provides some motivation for the characters, linking the action scenes with reasonable dialogue. More importantly, the makers have leavened the adventure and melodrama with a sense of humour and a self-effacing sense of the ridiculous. Finally in the three leads they have found three appealing but very different actors.
The variation on the Zorro theme that best distinguishes this film is the idea of the second generation Zorro being trained by an older, now retired, progenitor. Anthony Hopkins gives a dignified performance as the older man, passing along his wisdom to a crass and, initially, lower-class successor. Antonio Banderas brings an appealing presence and a sense of comic timing to the part of the younger man. He is the ultimate successor of Donald Fairbanks, the athletic and charismatic actor who set the standard for adventure actors. And Banderas' scenes with Catherine Zeta-Jones, the feisty heroine, have chemistry. You can feel the sexual tension, exacerbated by both the dance scene and the duel.
But, ultimately, it is the success of the action scenes, the return to great horse stunts, classic sword-fights and a you-beaut-all-in finale, that makes the film such a success. It reminds you again that the appeal of movies must be primarily sensual rather than intellectual and that, if the director can engage you with the characters and take you on a fast enough roller coaster, then you can forgive almost anything.
The Mask of Zorro is great entertainment. No better endorsement can be given.
Get Shorty, Touch and Jackie Brown. Three excellent recent movies from the contemporary writer giving Shakespeare and Jane Austen a run for their money as the writer of most screen hits.
The makers of Get Shorty are again responsible with the same scenarist, Scott Frank. He has been both true to the Leonard novel and inventive in his adaption of it. There is fairly elastic use of time in the movie. While the main narrative lines carries the movie trough from a jail break to a classic heist, the movie provides a series of background vignettes which introduce us to the characters and their personalities.
The innovative part here is the budding romance between the con and the cop. Jack Foley is a professional bank robber, rarely caught or jailed. Karen Sisco is a Federal Marshal straight out of classic hard-boiled detective fiction. Their dialogue, in the trunk scene, and in the later mutual seduction scene, is a throwback to the 40s detective movies like Bogie and Bacall in The Big Sleep. But the references are modern: Dunaway and Redford in Three Days of the Condor, for example. George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez are excellent in these parts.
The supporting cast, like in most recent Leonard adaptions, is equally strong, with a bizarre roster of bit part actors playing intriguing characters. Ving Rhames as Foley's buddy, Buddy, and Don Cheadle, as the dangerous Snoopy, being the two stand outs.
Out of Sight is especially blessed by its crisp dialogue. Years of leaden verbiage which concealed rather than revealed character, the one good thing derived from the success of Pulp Fiction is the new reverence for the spoken word in the crime and caper movie. Here the action is carried forward by the dialogue and the action scenes arise from the dialogue.
Get Shorty director Barry Sonnenfeld has given way to Steven Soderbergh for this movie. Even though he has not the reputation for the same light touch as Sonnenfeld, Soderbergh keeps this one flowing along.
I even liked the anti-climax that is an addition to the Leonard novel. It actually ended the story better than the novel did.
Like most of these movies, I can't wait to see Out of Sight again.
Six of the best
part
one
Six of the best
part two
[Note: Information about the movies mentioned, including cast and crew lists and all sorts of trivia, is available at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).]