When I go to a movie like "The Legend of Zorro", I'm not asking for too much: an attractive love interest, an interesting villain, a fair amount of sword play. Martin Cambell delivers Catherine Zeta Jones, Rufus Sewell and a plethora of sword fighting. Unfortunately, it also delivers a healthy dose of USA A Okay ideology that made me feel like I was listening to a two hour lecture on the history of American Manifest Destiny as opposed to watching an action adventure film. This film touches on everything from the evil of the South to a conspiracy of Old Europe to destroy the US. It is also seems fairly liberal with its interpretation of history. California was a U.S. territory with a military governor, there would be nothing preventing US soldiers from arresting a dissident as the movie claims.
The film reinforces the most traditional American values: a democratic Christian nation. The enemy in this love poem to America? An illuminati-esque group known as "Orbis Unum", which is supposed to mean One World, but as a Classicist I can assure you actually would mean something like One of World, which is gibberish to me. I guess Orbis Una wouldn't sound as cool. I'll admit my furor at the misuse of Latin is petty of me. Regardless the reliance on such a cliche world controlling secret society seems pure laziness.
It is also a shame, because Rufus Sewell is such a good villain. Even if he hasn't always gotten the best roles, he does an amazing job with them. He was disturbing as an Occult leader in "Bless the Child" (2000), deliciously arrogant and sadistic as a lord in "Knight's Tale" (2001) and now he has done as much as he could with his role in the "Legend of Zorro". Sewell's Count Armand is the perfect amount of playful menace in the early scenes with Antonio Banderas' Alejandro/Zorro. Unfortunately by the last act of the movie, he is reduced to obligatory scenes where he must explain the evil plan to destroy America and scenes where he must fall set conventions such as leaving his enemy alive despite the incredible stupidity of such a decision.
In the end "The Legend of Zorro" fails because of its reliance on archetypal action film conventions, poor performances by much of the main cast (Sewell being an exception that makes the other performances even more conspiciously bad) and an overbearing moral ideology that plays to traditional values. The last being particularly odd since Zorro is an outsider, a vigilante who is supposed to stand for the oppressed, a modern day Robin Hood. He is not supposed to stand for the values of the elite.
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