Hawaii Five-O: The Flip Side is Death

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Douglas Fairbanks plays his first action hero role as Zorro, the
sort of part he will play for the rest of his film career. Before this
very popular film, he was cast only in light comedies. He also produced
the film as he formed a studio called United Artists, that also included
partners Mary Pickford, D.W. Griffith, and Charlie Chaplin.

This fun type of swashbuckler film gave him a chance to show-off
his athletic ability, as he himself did all the dueling scenes and acrobatic
routines the story required. He is dressed in a black mask-and-cape, which
gave the role a certain amount of mysterious appeal to audiences.

The film is not much on character study, instead it’s filled with
action sequences and a melodramatic love story between Zorro and the sweet
Lolita Pukido (Marguerite). She doesn’t know that he is the son of the
aristocratic rancher Don Alejandro (De Gray), as he wants to see if she
loves him for his money.

Zorro is forced by his father to seek a wife, Lolita. But he acts
unmanly, forcing her to reject him even though he is so wealthy and her
father wants this marriage. She is the daughter of a blue-blooded Spanish
family that has fallen on hard times, her father is Don Carlos Pulido (Charles
Hill Mailes) and her mother is Dona Catalina Pulido (Claire McDowell).

The reason for the Zorro disguise is because he just returned three
months ago from studying in Spain and wants to secretly organize the caballeros
against the ruling oppressors who are cruel towards the poor, the natives
and the priests. He leaves his trade-mark of a Z on the skin of those oppressors
he duels with.

The action takes place in 19th century southern California where
the corrupt governor, Alvarado (Periolat), who is from the northern part
controls the colonial territory. The governor comes south because he is
upset with Zorro’s interference in his affairs. He will post a reward to
get him dead or alive. There is no mistake about who are the good guys
and who are the bad guys. The bad guys are the governor and his henchmen-
Sergeant Pedro Gonzalez (Noah Berry) and Captain Ramos (Robert McKim).

Zorro suddenly appears in the local cantina and fights a duel with
his enemies, while keeping all the other soldiers at bay. It reminded me
of a Charlie Chaplin routine, the one where he’s the tramp and is kicking
the cop in his behind. Zorro likes to laugh a lot and play cat-and-mouse
games with his enemies, all the while courting danger as he disarms his
opponent and toys with him.

The film disappointed me in many ways, not the least being that Zorro’s
plan to help the poor, seemed misplaced. This was more a story of aristocrats
and those of wealth versus bad politicians, rather than the Robin Hood
story it projected itself to be. It was really a stretch to believe that
the noble Zorro was anything but a rich aristocrat having a bit of sport,
and finding love with someone he could have easily found love with anyway
without going through his masquerade. The story itself was a cliche-ridden
one featuring his cardboard-like father wanting his son not to be an idler
and make something of himself, while the son feigns being fatigued all
the time by acting effeminate and performing silly magic tricks when he
should be seriously courting the eligible senorita his father fixed him
up with.

His faithful native servant is Roberto (Tote Du Crow), who knows
Don Diego Vega’s secrets but cannot speak-he can only hear. Roberto plays
the cliche part of the loyal sidekick, a role the western films made part
of their staple.

There are no surprises in this predictable costume actioner, but
it is pleasantly shot in B&W with a tinted look. It was such a successful
box office film; it became a precursor to the type of action film Hollywood
is now noted for.

Robert Conrad and Ross Martin parlayed the James Bond fad of the sixties into an innovative and successful TV series. So, why was the theatrical remake of “Wild, Wild West,” with bigger-name stars (Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh), a bigger screen, a bigger budget, and infinitely bigger unorthodox effects, the biggest box-position bomb of 1999? A a stack of factors go into making this film a disappointment, but at least its DVD transfer can be counted a big name.

Maybe the film doesn’t work because audiences find it demanding to accept a deadly Western hero. There were certainly any tally of iniquitous cowboys in the Old West after the Civil War, but Smith as cryptographic government spokesperson Jim West, circa 1869, is a bit of a sweep.

Maybe it’s Smith’s playing so much humor off his color that distances audiences, both dusky and white. Possibly it’s because Kline’s U.S. Marshall Artemus Gordon is too effete or too smug, his inventions too farfetched. Perhaps it’s because Branagh’s villain, Arliss Loveless, is not mean enough or funny enough (or because the extraordinary of his legless torso is not so clever as artlessly grotesque). Maybe it’s because object of a comedy it gets too needlessly humourless about Loveless killing West’s family. Maybe it’s because the beautiful costar, Salma Hayek, is prearranged so bantam to do. Maybe it’s because the film is proper too preposterous, the comedy too cooky, the jokes too silly. Still, that didn’t grieve Austin Powers. I don’t know.

When a comedy starts out with a decapitation, you have to muse what the filmmakers are thinking. In the object, maybe the film fails because it has so many gadgets and gizmos in it that it sinks under its own weight.

There isn’t a scene in the film that doesn’t utilize some creative and goofy contraption, the automatic devices getting bigger and more bizarre as the story goes on. Among other things there are circular magnetic dictum blades, bulletproof vests, a take off-powered bicycle, a railroad train full of apparatuses, disguises of all kinds, an armored tank, flame-throwing artillery, a da Vinci-like flying machine, and, the best for last, a magnificent, eighty-foot mechanical spider.