Mask of Zorro, The (Blu-ray) (1998)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Menu Animation & Audio Scene Selection Anim & Audio Audio Commentary-Martin Campbell (Director) Featurette-Making Of Unseen Footage Trailer Music Video-I Want To Spend My Lifetime Loving You Featurette-Legend of Zorro Promo Featurette-Legend of Zorro Scene
Rating
Year Of Production	1998
Running Time	137:38
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Martin Campbell
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Antonio Banderas Anthony Hopkins Catherine Zeta-Jones Stuart Wilson Matthew Letscher
Case	Amaray Variant
RPI	$34.95	Music	James Horner

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 Spanish DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 Italian DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	1080p
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English German Dutch Polish Czech Hungarian Icelandic Hindi Hebrew Turkish Danish Swedish Finnish Norwegian Greek	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes

    Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Anthony Hopkins. Three names that were once each in themselves enough to sell a movie, but whose star has certainly faded. The former two owe a good deal of that expired credibility to this very film. Now, 12 years later, it is fair to say that The Mask Of Zorro is a classic. It holds up as well today as it did upon its initial release. The action looks magnificent. The humour in the film comes across as funny as ever. The performances still ooze charisma.

    The film is a swashbuckling action-comedy. It tells the tale of an ageing Zorro (Hopkins) whose life, and daughter, is stolen from him by the sinister Don Rafael. Many years later Don Rafael returns to Zorro's Californian homeland with an evil plan to buy all of California. Realising he has an opportunity to reclaim his daughter (now a buxom Catherine Zeta-Jones), and that his people need him once more, Zorro reemerges to train a successor (Banderas) and thwart the evil Don.

    It is hard to think of anyone not to recommed The Mask Of Zorro to. The film has something for viewers of all ages and all tastes, and best of all it holds up well to repeat viewing.

Video

    The film is presented in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio in 1080p. The video looks magnificent.

    The image is clear and sharp. A very fine level of filmic grain is visible in the image. The colours are vibrant and tones look natural (well, all except Anthony Hopkins awful tan, but that looked just as unnatural theatrically). The image features a good level of shadow detail and excellent contrast.

    There is no sign of any compression artefacts of film artefacts in the transfer.

    The film features English subtitles for the hard of hearing and plain old English subtitles. Both appear to be quite accurate and well-timed.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The film features English, Spanish and Italian DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks.

    The dialogue is clearly placed in the mix and easy to understand. The audio appears to be well synchronized to the video.

    The film features a noteworthy orchestral score from James Horner, which captures the Latin American feel of the film through the use of brass and castanets.

    The surround audio is excellent. Although the surrounds are a lot less busy than in most modern audio mixes, they manage to create an immersive atmosphere and punctuate a lot of the action sequences. The subwoofer is used intelligently, adding real thunder to the explosions in the film and rumble under the hooves of horses.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    This Blu-ray edition picks up the extras from the previous "deluxe" DVD edition (reviewed here), which was released to coincide with the film's woeful sequel, adding one extra deleted scene and missing a handful of promotional stills and text filmographies. The result being that everything is presented in SD and there are a couple of oddly-placed promotional bits for The Legend of Zorro.

Audio Commentary (Martin Campbell, Director)

    An interesting, though somewhat dry, commentary from the film's director.

Featurette- Making Of - Unmasking Zorro (45:05)

    An excellent making of featurette that covers all aspects of production and the adaptation process. The highlight undoubtedly being the on-set stunt footage, although the fluffy cast interviews are surprisingly entertaining.

Deleted Scenes

    Two deleted scenes. One a pointless bit of character development entitled The Wallet, the other a reasonably interesting alternate/additional ending-segment in which the gang meet Santa Anna and return his gold.

Music Video - I Want to Spend My Lifetime Loving You (4:52)

    A horrendously cheesy video for the films closing credits ballad, sung by Marc Anthony and Tina Arena.

Featurette-Behind The Scenes - 'The Legend of Zorro' Behind The Scenes Sneak Peek (5:02)

    A cheesy advertorial for the film's belated sequel. Only really worth watching if you have seen the sequel and find it amusing to see actors shamelessly try to convince you how much better the sequel is!

Featurette - Exclusive scene from 'The Legend of Zorro' (1:37)

    A short action scene from the film's sequel, which isn't too bad out of context.

BD Live

    Access to the Sony BD Live Portal, although at the time of viewing there was no content specifically related to this film.

Trailers for other films

    The various international editions of the Blu-ray edition of the film are virtually identical, the only real difference being the coice of language tracks on the disc. The US region A swaps the Italian language track for a Portuguese one.

    The Mask Of Zorro is a (relatively) modern classic. A swashbuckling adventure with plenty of laughs and manificent action.

    This Blu-ray looks and sounds magnificent. Viewers could not have asked for a better looking transfer. The extras are great, but are only presented in SD.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall