I hesitate to call this "overdue", but I've had it for a while, so here we are. Really, I thought I had reviewed it, but I can't find the post searching via title or primary actresses. Maria (Penelope Cruz) is the daughter of a poor farmer with a loan on his farm from a Mexican bank owned by Sara's (Salma Hayek) father. Or, that's how it was. The bank is seized by an agent (Dwight Yoakum) of a U.S. bank, after he poisons Sara's father. By that time he and his guys have already killed Maria's father, not to mention most of the other subsistence farmers under the auspices of failing to pay off their loans (and the exorbitant interest rates), as part of a railroad-related land grab.
Essentially, if this were Once Upon a Time in the West, Yoakum is playing Henry Fonda's character, which is not a comparison that does Yoakum any favors, but it's the one I thought of. Although his twangy delivery reminds me of Gary Oldman in The Fifth Element (Luc Besson's got a writer credit for this film), and Yoakum does have some of that same self-assured, shit-eating salesman to his performance, minus the unhinged energy Oldman brought to that role.
Independent of each other, Maria and Sara decide to strike back by robbing the now American-controlled banks. Except they're both incompetent at it. Fortunately, the local priest took confession from a retired bank robber - 37 banks, never caught! - and they eventually get the training montage that establishes Maria is a natural with a pistol, but Sara couldn't hit the broad side of a barn because she starts hiccuping when she gets nervous. She is, however, good with knives and they successfully rob several banks.
At a certain point, the railroad tycoon - who is, of course, completely unaware of Yoakum's skullduggery, and aghast when he learns during the climax, sure, pull the other one, it plays "Yankee Doodle" - asks his future son-in-law (Steve Zahn), the 19th Century equivalent of a forensic scientist, to go down and poke around. Zahn quickly figures out Sara's father was murdered, and just as quickly gets taken hostage by the "bandidas", then starts helping them as security on the banks tightens. Which is the point when it shifts more to a heist movie, as the ladies use him to get inside banks that are looking for two women, not a young married couple, or a widow and her father.
It's a little ridiculous both women seem really into Zahn, unless you look at it as a way in which they're competing, as there's a fair amount of class tension between Maria, who dresses plainly, isn't up on global politics or finance and sometimes struggles to win tic-tac-toe against her (admittedly clever) horse, and Sara, who is just back from studying in Europe and is skilled at ice skating and archery. Sara is the one who understands if the gold is transported into the U.S., the money in the Mexican banks is worthless paper, while Maria understands how difficult life is for the people that are rallying around them, passing information, helping them escape. In the same way the stuff about gold making the paper money worth anything is just talk to Maria, the lives of most people in Mexico is just something Sara was vaguely aware of, if that. She talks about herself as being European. So Sara lost her dad, but Maria lost everything except her horse.
(I did think it was funny, during their initial meeting, Sara tells Yoakum that in Europe, 'we have learned to be wary of the American definition of friendship.' Who do you think the U.S. learned, "here's some booze, and while you're drinking, we'll take everything you have at gunpoint," from? Just because we do it better - as in, more ruthlessly - is no reason to get salty.)
Hayek and Cruz play off each other well, in the times where things go well and they're having fun, and when they get frustrated and start fighting (sometimes literally.) Zahn can easily play a strait-laced goober to be mostly pushed around by the force of their personalities, but with enough integrity to occasionally bust through the sniping about who kisses better and get them to focus.
The movie sets up certain things quietly, to pay off later - Sara's ice skating is established via one shot of a photograph on the wall of her father's office, the intelligence of Maria's horse is set up by the tic-tac-toe game at the beginning - during the last big bank heist. There's a funny bit where Zahn is crawling along a rope to get into a building and as Maria's horse gets distracted, the rope begins to sag, dropping him towards one of the guards. The guard's tuning a banjo, and as the rope sinks lower, the plucking gets more out of tune, only to start sounding better as the horse resumes its post and the rope draws taut.
It's not reaching for any great heights, but the movie knows what it wants to do, sets up what's needed to get started and then pretty much gets to it, letting the actors have some fun with their roles.
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