The Mask of Zorro (1998), directed by Martin Campbell.
Like The Mummy (1999) this is designed to be a crowd-pleasing summer blockbuster, mining an established mythology and using familiar action/romance film themes. It's the awful aristos vs the dignified peasants and their hero. The audience need contribute nothing except their time.
Zorro himself is a composite of Robin Hood and the Scarlet Pimpernel. The fantasy of Alta California has a touch of the Arabian Nights and the mythologies almost touch when Elena talks about riding her horse at night across the plains of Andalusia. More: there is an "I am Spartacus!" moment in the prison and an escape taken from The Count of Monte Cristo.
Abundant swashbuckling sword-fights and ambitious comedy action brawls which owe much to The Three Musketeers: the demolition of a troop barracks and horse-chase stunts.
Antonio Banderas is really very good at the comedy bits. He, Anthony Hopkins and the always perfectly-lit Catherine Zeta-Jones had extensive sword training for the film. This was her breakout role.
Notes:
It begins at the triumphant ending: Zorro's glorious defeat of his enemy and liberation of the country. With the setting sun behind he poses one last time on faithful Tornado...
...before it all goes south and we segue into "Zorro: The Next Generation".
Was he just comatose in prison for 20 years until his enemy reappeared? Who doesn't recognize him?
Old and young Zorro are Obi-wan and Luke. The training, both the sword martial arts and to be a charming foppish cavalier, is improbably accelerated, but that's the movies.
Erotic swordplay! "He was vigorous, Father! He was quite vigorous".
They get such titanic explosions from low-pressure black powder.
Ballistics nonsense: flying bodies don't get knocked backwards when shot with a bullet.
Hopkins punches out a guard at the big party. Doesn't that need to be explained later?
Banderas is the only Spanish lead. Hopkins, Zeta-Jones and Stuart Wilson are Brits. And that's ok: it's acting.
Lush James Horner score. Photographed by Phil Méheux who frequently collaborates with director Campbell.
Followed by The Legend of Zorro (2005) with the same leads and director. It did not do as well.
I am posting this on August 9, 2019, the 100th anniversary of the first appearance of Zorro in the pages of All-Story Weekly:
People are sometimes surprised that Zorro is not from traditional folklore, but is rather the invention of American novelist and screenwriter Johnston McCulley. He has 45 IMDB credits, not all of them for Zorro stories.
Available on a splendid-looking Blu-ray with a detailed, technical commentary by the director.
I am gratified to learn that he studied swashbucklers from classic Hollywood when making this. As I suspected, he cites Gene Kelly's The Three Musketeers (1948).