Merrick's eyes explode like flash paper...
Salma Hayek. Penelope Cruz. Lots of guns (I mean the kind you shoot, not...oh, never mind). Luc Besson writing and producing. Robert Mark Kamen (FIFTH ELEMENT and THE TRANSPORTER) co-scripting. Thierry Arbogast (LE FEMME NIKITA, FIFTH ELEMENT, and one of the coolest names I've ever heard) photography. Eric Serra score. The Besson Gang's all here. And so are Salma, and Penelope, and guns.
Behold the absurdly hot, mind-bendingly provocative Latina majesty that is: BANDIDAS!
Mounteen has seen it. He says the plot "has more holes in it than a freshly shot Mexican", but he still kinda liked it. How could any male, who is even vaguely alive, not?
Here's Mounteen...
I just saw the new film Bandidas, starring Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek that drops in the U.S. on May 5th.
It’s a pretty decent little action / comedy / western that’s really only kept alive by the chemistry of its two leads. Cruz plays Maria Alvarez, a lowly farm girl with a lot of street smarts, who is very talented with a gun. Hayek plays the very upper class Sara Sandoval. She’s the daughter of a local politician, and much more knowledgeable than Maria. The two very different women become a bank-robbing duo in an effort to stop a ruthless enforcer (Dwight Yoakam) from stealing there land to build a railroad.
Penelope and Salma have never been sexier. It’s almost too much beauty for one film. I don’t know who decided to pair these two up but they’re a genius. There is a point in the film where they are both dressed in burlesque outfits, fondeling each other, and practicing their kissing on a naked Steve Zahn. I mean c’mon a naked Steve Zahn is worth the price of admission alone. Cruz and Hayek do play off each other nicely, it’s always fairly amusing and funny and never descends into annoying hen pecking.
The other great performance here is Dwight Yoakam. He is great at playing the villain, and while this film is no Panic Room, Yoakam does let fly a very evil bastard who is a very imposing bad guy. Steve Zahn is also good as always but he never really gets time to shine. He’s playing third fiddle to Cruz and Hayek, which suits the flow of the film just right.
The real downside to Bandidas is the plot. It’s got more holes in it than a freshly shot Mexican. We’re never really shown who Yoakam’s character is, or who he works for if anyone. His motivation is not really made clear enough to understand. We just know that he likes to kill people, and he wants land to build a railroad. The story just seems wrapped up a little too quickly at the end as well. All these girls do through the whole film is rob banks, yet at the end no one seems to really care that they stole a ton of cash. If they’d just expand the plot a little more and let us in on the big picture of what’s actually happening, than it would make the film that much more enjoyable.
With that said it’s still an enjoyable buddy action comedy. With stars that are much easier to look at than say Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan. The action is top notch. Especially one scene at the end that is a slow motion almost “matrix” style gun fight that happens on a train. It’s a pretty spectacular sequence. Bandidas is a fun film that will deliver a few laughs as well, so I think it’s worth checking out.
