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osprey_archerSO YOU GUYS I SAW THIS MOVIE. It's called Bandidas and it stars Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek as Maria and Sara, a Mexican peasant girl and a European-educated lady who team up to rob banks after an evil American banker, with greasy hair and an inevitable southern accent starts stealing land from the peasants in order to build a railroad.
TEAM UP TO ROB BANKS, you guys! While wearing corsets and cowboy pants! And Sara has throwing knives! And Maria has a horse sidekick! Seriously, a horse sidekick, like Maria is channeling her inner badass Disney princess. At the beginning of the movie she is trying to play tic-tac-toe with her horse. Later on, she uses him as a stepping stone to climb over the wall into Sara's house. This is when they meet: Sara is drifting down the loggia and Maria is all "I SCORN YOU because you are wearing spurs and therefore clearly do not treat your horse sidekick with proper respect!"
Sara is like, "The hell are you doing in my fancy house?"
But then the badguys kill Sara's father! And she escapes the lecherous greasy-haired banker by swinging across the courtyard on a chandelier chain!
AND THEN THEY TEAM UP TOGETHER TO ROB BANKS. Like, basically they meet again when Sara is attempting to hold up a bank (to get VENGEANCE for her father's death, obviously), never mind she has no idea how to use a gun, only to have Maria turn around and be like, "Excuse me, I was robbing this bank first! And BTW your gun isn't even loaded."
Mostly it is a ridiculous bank robbery heist type of movie, except it keeps making these gestures at being a nationalist epic of socialist revolution - seriously, there is a scene where the peasants band together to save Maria and Sara from a police stage coach and Sara is all "Viva Mexico! Viva la revolucion!" and everyone CHEERS.
I am just saying, I would have watched that movie until the end of time, even though that probably would have ended with execution by firing squad a la Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, except Butch and Sundance were basically lowlife criminals whereas Maria and Sara were criminals for justice. They could have been like Joan of Arc squared.
However, mostly the filmmakers squander this potential. It rather undercuts the socialist and/or nationalist epic possibility by pinning the blame for the peasants' dispossession totally and entirely responsible on the evil southern banker. The bank itself, and the United States, and the Mexican officials who help him (including Sara's father) are all exonerated of having anything to do with it, although one rather imagines they must at least have known that the evil banker was importing legions of lowlifes to beat down the peasantry.
So mostly it's a cute but fairly paint-by-numbers heist movie, as if the filmmakers said, "Our bank robbery movie stars two girls! Clearly that is twisty enough for anyone!" and then tossed every robbery movie cliche into a blender: training montage, ending in them bonding and becoming partners (this word probably needs to have sparkly stars around it or something, the way people in heist movies say it), followed by increasingly baroque robbery attempts, one of which involves ice skates and also Maria's horse sidekick. There's even a train scene! It's terribly entertaining but not as awesome as it could have been. SAD SAD.
And also there is a totally awkward sequence where Sara and Maria dress as showgirls to interrogate this dweebish crime investigator to New York, which naturally requires tying him to the bed, at which point Sara decides that Maria needs to learn how to kiss using Dweebish Crime Investigator as, like, a practice mannequin, and Dweebish looks totally blissed out by his sexual assault, why film why, I have pretty much decided that this scene never happened.
Because obviously Sara would have taught Maria how to kiss herself, am I right! It is an important skill for a highwaywoman/lady bank robber/etc, and here is an opportunity for Sara to contribute to Maria's neglected education.
The fact that this movie, flawed though it is, does not have any kind of fandom kind of kills me. Because proto-revolutionary girl bank robbers, you guys. Doesn't everyone yearn for that???
TEAM UP TO ROB BANKS, you guys! While wearing corsets and cowboy pants! And Sara has throwing knives! And Maria has a horse sidekick! Seriously, a horse sidekick, like Maria is channeling her inner badass Disney princess. At the beginning of the movie she is trying to play tic-tac-toe with her horse. Later on, she uses him as a stepping stone to climb over the wall into Sara's house. This is when they meet: Sara is drifting down the loggia and Maria is all "I SCORN YOU because you are wearing spurs and therefore clearly do not treat your horse sidekick with proper respect!"
Sara is like, "The hell are you doing in my fancy house?"
But then the badguys kill Sara's father! And she escapes the lecherous greasy-haired banker by swinging across the courtyard on a chandelier chain!
AND THEN THEY TEAM UP TOGETHER TO ROB BANKS. Like, basically they meet again when Sara is attempting to hold up a bank (to get VENGEANCE for her father's death, obviously), never mind she has no idea how to use a gun, only to have Maria turn around and be like, "Excuse me, I was robbing this bank first! And BTW your gun isn't even loaded."
Mostly it is a ridiculous bank robbery heist type of movie, except it keeps making these gestures at being a nationalist epic of socialist revolution - seriously, there is a scene where the peasants band together to save Maria and Sara from a police stage coach and Sara is all "Viva Mexico! Viva la revolucion!" and everyone CHEERS.
I am just saying, I would have watched that movie until the end of time, even though that probably would have ended with execution by firing squad a la Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, except Butch and Sundance were basically lowlife criminals whereas Maria and Sara were criminals for justice. They could have been like Joan of Arc squared.
However, mostly the filmmakers squander this potential. It rather undercuts the socialist and/or nationalist epic possibility by pinning the blame for the peasants' dispossession totally and entirely responsible on the evil southern banker. The bank itself, and the United States, and the Mexican officials who help him (including Sara's father) are all exonerated of having anything to do with it, although one rather imagines they must at least have known that the evil banker was importing legions of lowlifes to beat down the peasantry.
So mostly it's a cute but fairly paint-by-numbers heist movie, as if the filmmakers said, "Our bank robbery movie stars two girls! Clearly that is twisty enough for anyone!" and then tossed every robbery movie cliche into a blender: training montage, ending in them bonding and becoming partners (this word probably needs to have sparkly stars around it or something, the way people in heist movies say it), followed by increasingly baroque robbery attempts, one of which involves ice skates and also Maria's horse sidekick. There's even a train scene! It's terribly entertaining but not as awesome as it could have been. SAD SAD.
And also there is a totally awkward sequence where Sara and Maria dress as showgirls to interrogate this dweebish crime investigator to New York, which naturally requires tying him to the bed, at which point Sara decides that Maria needs to learn how to kiss using Dweebish Crime Investigator as, like, a practice mannequin, and Dweebish looks totally blissed out by his sexual assault, why film why, I have pretty much decided that this scene never happened.
Because obviously Sara would have taught Maria how to kiss herself, am I right! It is an important skill for a highwaywoman/lady bank robber/etc, and here is an opportunity for Sara to contribute to Maria's neglected education.
The fact that this movie, flawed though it is, does not have any kind of fandom kind of kills me. Because proto-revolutionary girl bank robbers, you guys. Doesn't everyone yearn for that???
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Date: 2013-05-27 02:27 am (UTC)Anyway, hi! I am rymenhild and I am so excited that there are other people slashing Lost Prince in the universe besides me that I obviously need to friend you.
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Date: 2013-05-27 02:53 am (UTC)And hi! I am always happy to have new friends. I post about...basically all the things, but right now I am in the middle of a Lost Prince mini-epic so there will be a number of posts about that for a while to come.
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Date: 2013-05-27 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-28 01:16 am (UTC)You should watch it :D :D :D
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Date: 2013-05-28 04:18 pm (UTC)Where is the ghost of Gore Vidal when we need him?