My Review of "The Mask of Zorro"

The Mask of Zorro came out back in 1998. I remember when I first watched it and immediately fell in love with it. The 4K Blu-ray of it came out in 2020 and I knew I had to check this movie out again. With the newly upgraded visuals and audio I had high expectations for this experience.

If you haven't seen this movie yet it starts out with a backstory. It explains how the Spaniards had colonized the land of California and that the Mexicans were just about to take back this land. As a result the Spaniards headed by Don Rafael Montero were on their way back to Spain. He was to relinquish his land claims to a select few dons that still occupy the area.

Throughout their days of tyranny there was a lone vigilante that had thwarted many of their schemes. That masked man so happened to be Zorro. Over the years he had become a legend amongst the people. In this first act we discover more about Zorro and his alter ego Don Diego de la Vega.

De la Vega makes one last show of defiance to Montero before Montero leaves for Spain. Unfortunately Montero discovers Zorro's true identity and disaster strikes the family of the De la Vegas. Diego will be sentenced to life in a solitary prison for life.

The movie then advances 20 years. The main focus is now on our main protagonist Alejandro. He's a common thief that had been greatly influenced by the legend of Zorro. He and his older brother had even helped out Zorro when they were young kids.

Unfortunately he and his gang of bandits hit a catastrophic end when a local military man, Captain Love seemingly kills his older brother and their close friend. He vows for justice after he escapes their chase.

As Alejandro drowns his sorrows at a local bar he bumps into someone he hasn't seen in a long time and this eventually leads him to take the mantle as the next Zorro.

Watching this movie again today, I realized how much they did right with this movie. The story seems plausible. Raphael comes back 20 years later to purchase California from Mexico. The means of how they plan to purchase California actually kind of made sense. It's a very clever idea that totally flew over me when I was younger.

The action sequences are also absolutely spectacular. Each scene is littered with very well thought out choreography. There are no shaking cameras, nor is there any quick scene jumping. Each of the scenes are methodically carried out where the audience can easily follow along. These scenes also tell mini stories as well. There is an air of charisma when Zorro is able to fight these characters and mock them at the same time. He jokingly plays with his prey before eliminating them from the equation. I was really impressed with all of them even the dance scenes. Yes there's a dance scene.

I'd also like to add that all of the actors in this movie do an absolutely great job. Each one of them are charismatic and really help you fall in love with their characters. The scenes have so much more gravitas with their large personalities. They all bring so much fun to the screen.

This is not to say there aren't a few problems with the movie that I now notice. First and foremost this movie wouldn't work today because it didn't cast the Spanish characters with Spanish people.

The lack in diversity may not throw some people off but there are some really weird scenes that display this lack of diversity. For instance, everyone is supposed to be able to speak Spanish in the movie. California at that time was Mexican and the people coming in were colonizers from Spain. There's a scene in the market where one of our protagonists talks to a local merchant that had taken care of her when she was young. The merchant speaks to her in Spanish but required a translator to explain what she was saying. This doesn't make sense since our protagonist is from Spain. There's no logic to this at all.

There are a few weird scenes like this sprinkled throughout the movie but they rarely take me out of the experience like that market scene. It's unfortunate but we can now do better in Hollywood.

As for the visual updates, I can gladly tell you that the visuals are spectacular. The colors never looked better than when I watched it on the 4K Blu-ray. Since most of the scenes were shot in daylight a lot of the visual information throughout the movie were retained. You don't see a lot of noise in this movie because of that. Unfortunately because of the older equipment there are some weird color blending issues. This isn't the fault of the restoration but rather the film shooting it at the time. The dynamic range of the older cameras weren't able to keep up in certain darker scenes.

The sound is great but there isn't much added in terms of the atmospheric and surround sound. It actually sounds very similar to the original 5.1 surround track back in the day. I was hoping that they'd have a little more separation and add a few nuances that would have me feel more into the action.

Unfortunately there isn't much added to the extras for this disk as well. There's a few deleted scenes and they didn't even upgrade the visuals and audio for these deleted scenes. They literally look like they were ripped from a VHS tape. It's pretty bad. There's probably one or two scenes that I think could have helped build the movie but I completely understood the elimination of these scenes.

Overall, I would say that this is still a classic for me. I loved every minute of this movie. It's going to be a movie that I'm going to go back to over and over again. The new 4K Blu-ray really adds some punch to this movie visually but doesn't really elevate anything in the audio department. Extras are sparse but that's to be expected with new disks nowadays. I have to give this movie a 9 out of 10 and the disk a 7.5 out of 10. If you still have the regular Blu-ray of this movie you probably don't have to upgrade.