The Mask of Zorro

Today, dear readers, I’ve decided to tackle a subject I’ve been meaning to write about for a very long time. It’s time to write about the 1998 swashbuckler movie The Mask of Zorro.

In many ways, I feel this movie doesn’t get the love it deserves, because this is a surprisingly solid movie, especially for a late 90’s action movie. This isn’t like Van Helsing to me, where it’s veering slightly into so-bad-it’s-good territory. The acting is great, the characters are vivid and interesting, the movie doesn’t look cheap and the plot is simple, but effective. Even the comedy is pretty good, and isn’t just roll-your-eyes silliness or slapstick pratfalls. This is a genuinely good movie.

But that said, I’m still gonna nitpick and point weird things out in it because… Well, I’m me. But just know that while I nitpick this, my nitpicks come from a place of love.

So let’s begin.

The first thing I’d like to talk about is the movies villain, Don Rafael Montero. He is introduced to us as Governor of California, who is now being forced to leave, as Spain is forced to abandon what was known as ”New Spain”, following the Mexican war for independence.

This is a slight deviation from history, it should be mentioned, since the actual governor of California at the time was Pablo Vicente de Sola who, unlike Don Rafael, was NOT hounded out of the country and forced back to Spain following Mexico’s independence.

But that’s a bit of leeway we can give to the plot, because historically, California was not in fact protected by a masked swordsman dressed in black. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it.

Anyway, twenty years later Don Montero returns to California. His first order of business is to visit the prison where he imprisoned Diego de la Vega, the vigilante known as Zorro.

He has the warden gather all the prisoners to find if de la Vega is among them, and he inspects them all personally, though he is ultimately unsuccessful, and determines that Diego must be dead.

What I find funny about this whole thing is… should Montero really have so much difficulty finding Diego here?

Diego de la Vega is played by Anthony Hopkins… who has blue eyes.

How many people in California, in 1841, has blue eyes?!

It’s not like Montero is going by some vague description here. He has MET de la Vega several times!

In the group of prisoners, they have several people who quite obviously won’t be de la Vega, including a black man who is not only too young, but also almost a head taller than Montero and, oh yeah, he’s black!

I mean, at the very least, he should be able to narrow it all down, telling the warden ”The guy has blue eyes”.

While on the subject of Montero, there’s another scene with him which perplexes me, simply because I can’t tell if the scene is badly written… or one of the most brilliant pieces of political satire in cinematic history.

It’s the scene where a celebration is held at Montero arriving in California. He steps ashore and, after greeting the Dons of California, adresses the gathered crowd of peasants and tells them that he knows they’re not happy to see him.

Why should you care about any of your leaders, past or present? The Spaniards opressed you, the Mexicans ignored you, and the Dons? Well, the Dons, the Dons… The Dons seem merely content to cheat and lie to you.

And this speech is really funny to me, because he talks about these three groups that have mistreated the people… which is real fucking bold of him seeing as he was part of two of them! He was the governor who carried out the spanish opression, AND he was one of the Dons, and ensured their continued positions of power before he left.

He asks who’s ever actually helped the people of California, and when someone names Zorro, Montero remarks that Zorro hasn’t been seen for 20 years.

And he declares that the time has come for them to take their destiny into their own hands, not as Spaniards or Mexicans, but as Californians.

And the people cheer…

And this is what I find so strange. Because this is the easiest led crowd in history! Montero tells them Zorro has been gone for 20 years… which is also the case with Montero, after he was CHASED OUT OF THE COUNTRY.

People cheer him like he’s some gallant, returning savior, when like I said, he was INSTRUMENTAL in the opression of these people. There are people in the crowd right now who likely remember Rafael Montero quite vividly!

This is the man who, as his final act as Governor, seized three innocent men and ordered their summary execution in front of the Gubernatorial Mansion! You’d think people would be quite reluctant to cheer him, and AT BEST think of the name “Rafael Montero” with sullen resentment.

At worst, they should view him with a white hot hatred! If they found out the man was coming back, you’d think one or two of them would seek revenge for the suffering they’ve endured at his hands. Diego snuck a knife with him with the intent to kill him, but stopped himself. There really was no one else with an axe to grind against Montero? There’s not exactly an abundance of guards to prevent an attack, and there are about a hundred people in the crowd.

But instead, they cheer him when he swears he will never abandon them. Again, I’m not sure if this is poor writing, or political satire of the highest caliber.

But let’s move on.

The second thing I’d like to talk about is a small thing that actually comes at the very end of the movie, where we see Alejandro, now married to Elena, telling the story of how Diego died to his infant son Joaquin.

As Elena comes to tuck Joaquin in, Alejandro leaves the room of his estate, as the movie comes to a close.

Here’s my question: How does Alejandro have an estate?

Diego de la Vega had an estate at the beginning of the movie, but that was burned down when he was arrested by Rafael. In fact, where did Diego get the money for Alejandro’s clothes when they go to Montero’s party? It’s not like he had any money when he escaped from prison, and those are not cheap clothes Alejandro is wearing, and we must assume whatever assets he had were seized when he was thrown in prison.

It’s not that long after the main story, so how did Alejandro become part of the upper class? It’s one thing to put on nice clothes for a few days, another to build a house and buy titles and lands.

Is the implication just that when nobody was looking, Alejandro took a few bars of gold to get himself a title?

It’s either that, or this is all bought with Montero’s money. After all, Elena was, in the eyes of everyone else, the daughter of Don Rafael Montero, so it makes sense she’d be the heir to his fortune and assets.

That would actually be a kind of neat reversal of what Montero did to Diego at the beginning, taking his family, his title and his wealth from him. And it’d mean that when Alejandro married Elena, he would have taken her name, assuming she changed her last name to that of her biological father, de la Vega.

But these are small quibbles. The main thing I’d like to talk about is Montero’s right hand man and the movies secondary antagonist, Captain Harrison Love.

In the movie, we actually get very little information about him, beyond him being a captain. So we’re left only to speculate about details based on what we see.

Here’s the thing, though. Once you actually start looking closer on Captain Love, you start seeing a TON of details that actually paints a VERY interesting picture of him.

Captain love is, ostensibly, a US military captain. But if that is true, that actually raises a bunch of questions about him. Most notably, why is Captain Love in California?

We’re told in the movie that Mexico is at war with the United States. This is another minor historical hiccup, since that would be the Mexican-American War of 1846… and this movie takes place in 1841.

But let’s suppose that was just a minor caption problem, and that when they said ”Twenty Years Later”, they meant 25. It’s not really important in the grand scheme of things.

What IS important is that Montero outlines his plan to buy California from General Santa Anna, from gold dug from his own land, which Montero will make up to look like it’s actually from Spain.

As an aside, this is something kind of interesting about Montero, in that his grand plan… is to make California an independent nation. This, in and of itself, isn’t exactly the typical twirl-your-mustache type of villainy one would expect from a movie like this.

Of course, we then find out Montero is getting this gold through forced labour, using people he’s taken from, as Captain Love puts it, ”anywhere we wanted”. So while the end goal perhaps isn’t villainous, the means certainly are.

But I’m getting sidetracked.

What I’m getting at here is that Montero wants to take advantage of the war between Mexico and the US, and Santa Anna’s need for money to fund said war, to buy California.

But if that is true, what is Captain Love doing here? Montero’s plan involves helping Santa Anna, which does not serve the US army in any way. So there’s a big question mark over Captain Love already.

Of course, one might claim he’s Texan, as some sources suggest (although I question that, since his accent is very Midwestern, which makes sense since his actor, Matt Letscher, is from Michigan) and Texas didn’t become a US state until 1845, which would mean that he’s not connected to US military…

But that begs the question of why Texas would send anyone to help Santa Anna, and if so… why they sent only one captain, rather than a regiment. After all, when we first see Captain Love, he is not alone, but the other soldiers with him are very much not US military. And of course there’s that aforementioned speculation that this is actually 1846, not 1841…

But let’s take a look at the captain, shall we? And I mean, let’s take an actual look at him.

Captain Harrison Love is supposedly a US Cavalry Captain. Except if he’s a captain, his uniform is wrong. He is, for example, wearing shoulder scales on his uniform, which were worn by enlisted men, as opposed to the epaulettes or shoulder straps worn by an officer. His sword, rather than being a curved cavalry sword used by the US army at the time, is instead a straight sword, not all that different from a Texas dragoon saber.

And his hat… well, his hat is its own little anomaly, because it’s a gambler hat, a type of hat that wouldn’t be around for at least another three decades or so. It also has the crossed sabers, an insignia that wasn’t introduced until 1851.

But anachronism aside, that is not the hat of a US cavalry captain. They wore a different type of headgear, called a shako.

Of course, I freely admit that I’m not an expert on military history, especially not when it comes to pre-civil war American history, so if it turns out I’m completely wrong, I invite any military history buffs to please let me know. I assure you, I would be absolutely thrilled.

But where am I going with all this?

Personally, I think it’s very clear that Captain Harrison Love isn’t actually a captain. His uniform is all wrong, his weapon is wrong, his presence as a US military officer makes no sense…

However, he still clearly has a military past, given his posture and his training. He’s a skilled marksman and enough of a fencer to hold his own against Alejandro Murietta, who’s been trained by the original Zorro.

It’s to the point where Diego, having never seen the captain before, took one look at him and recognized him as ”a professional soldier” who is ”trained to kill”.

Where, then, does this leave us?

The way I see it there are two possibilities. Either, Captain Love is a deserter, or he’s been discharged from the military. I’m leaning towards the latter, personally, and I base this on a very simple observation we can make about Captain Love.

He is, to put it delicately, a complete and absolute stone-cold psycho.

He hunts down the outlaws Joaquin and Alejandro Murietta, wounding Joaquin, who shoots himself rather than being captured. Captain Love then decapitates Joaquin’s corpse and we later see he preserved the head in a glass jar filled with alcohol, which he drinks from, while talking about Peruvian Indian tribes who cannibalize their enemies to take their power.

He has also done the same thing to the hand of Three-Fingered Jack, another outlaw and partner of the Murietta brothers. It’s also Captain Love who suggests, once Montero becomes worried that Santa Anna might find out about the gold mine and Monteros ruse, that they blow up the mine… with all the workers still in it, in order to erase all evidence.

These are not things done by a person who’s playing with a full deck of cards. He hasn’t got a screw loose, so much as he’s had the entire construction yard completely fall apart.

It’s not that unbelievable to say that maybe this isn’t all new behavior for him, and when comitting similar acts back home, his commanding officer decided this was not behavior he was all that fine with, and Harrison Love was drummed out of the army.

So Harrison Love grabs some military surplus and moves south, across the border, to where people KNOW of the US military… but nobody knows enough about the particulars to question parts of his uniform being out of place.

He works as a bounty hunter, and eventually is employed by Don Rafael Montero, who needed someone unscrupulous, cold but also skilled in military tactics to lead his personal militia, and adopts the rank of Captain.

Diego mentions Montero having “hired” Captain Love, and when Alejandro is introduced to the Captain during Montero’s party, he’s ONLY introduced only as ”Captain Harrison Love”, as opposed to ”Captain Harrison Love of the United States Army” or anything about being sent by any superior officer, or any mention of troops or regiments he’s part of.

Interestingly, in an early draft of the script, Captain Love is never described as wearing a US army uniform at all, and introduces himself as ”of the First Dragoons of California”. Later, he’s introduced as in command of the presidio. So in the first draft, he’s pretty much just a mercenary, but in the movie, there’s clearly more to him which is never stated outright.

Now, you can claim that this is some kind of fan theory. And maybe it is, since it’s never confirmed that any of this is true about Captain Love. But if it is, I think it holds water pretty well, since otherwise… Captain Love doesn’t actually make much sense when you look at him.

And in case you’re under the impression that I’m in some way being disparaging against Captain Love, let me make something very clear.

Captain Love is, in my opinion, woefully underappreciated as a villain. His actor is doing a phenomenal job in the movie portraying him as an ice-cold, ruthless monster, who’s personal motives are largely obscured. He seemingly doesn’t care about money, since when he decapitates Joaquin, he is completely uninterested in the silver necklace the outlaw was wearing, and leaves it behind. He’s got a weird, twisted honour about him, and he stands out among other law enforcement in the movie in how meticulous and proper he is. It’s not even like he’s doing it because of some sadistic enjoyment he gets from killing, because when he kills, he looks very detached. You get the feeling that to him, it’s enough knowing he serves what he considers a higher purpose. He’s dutiful, determined… but also completely without a moral compass.

It should be mentioned that Harrison Love is actually loosely based on Harry Love, a lawman credited with capturing and killing the outlaw Joaquin Murietta, the real life inspiration for Zorro, and he did actually preserve Murietta’s head in alcohol. However, that was in the 1850’s, not 1841, and to my knowledge, the real Harry Love didn’t drink from the alcohol.

As an aside, there’s actually a funny coincidence surrounding the anachronisms surrounding Captain Love, not only with his hat, but he also at one point uses a 1858 Remington Revolver Carbine, 17 years before the Remington 1858 New Army Revolver was made.

Matt Letscher, the actor playing Captain Love, also appears in the TV-series The Flash as Eobard Thawne, AKA the Reverse Flash… who is a time traveler.

Which actually makes me kind of wonder why that hasn’t been a fan theory I’ve had to deal with at any point! And no, I hasten to add, that is NOT an invitation! It’s just a bit funny that I, by complete accident, somehow managed to stumble across an idea that makes about seventeen billion times more sense than Jack Dawson being a time traveler!

But that’s all I had for this movie, at least for now. Like I said, I still think it’s a fantastic movie, and if you haven’t seen it… well, sorry for spoiling it. And if you have seen it, then why not see it again, since it really holds up.

Of course, there may be a time when I talk about the sequel… in which case, I can tell you right now I’m not gonna be nearly as jovial and forgiving.