Bandidas (DVD)

The setup for Bandidas should be enough to entice most red-blooded, heterosexual males to see this film; it features Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek running around with a distinctly lesbonic undertone to the whole thing. The film revolves around two women, María Álvarez (Cruz) and Sara Sandoval (Hayek). Maria has been forced off of her land along with her father by a horrible US land baron, Tyler Jackson (Dwight Yoakam), whilst Sara is a wealth woman who has just returned from Europe to find that the baron has targetted her father as well. They decide to team up, but of course, things aren't great to begin with, and it isn't until they meet Bill Buck (Sam ...  Read the complete review

Unscrupulous Americans descend on Mexico, determined to build a railway through swathes of farming land, foreclosing mortgages and shooting homeowners. The only people who can stand in their way? The highly-educated socialite daughter of a murdered banker and the Dr Doolittle urchin daughter of an evicted farmer. I came across the DVD of this film in a FNAC in Brussels, and I was somewhat astounded not to have heard of it before. Produced by Cinema du Look legend Luc Besson (who I note has actually started directing films again after a decade of living off his name, good man) and starring the ridiculously attractive Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz, Bandidas is a ...  Read the complete review

Luc Besson has created some of my favourite films (Nikita for example) and some of the most enjoyable action movies of the last couple of years (Transporter, Taxi and District 13) so coming across something of his that I had never heard of before was a great joy! Bandidas is another example of Besson's current love of scripting comedy action adventure films, though this time he moves away from the modern day and heads over to wild west era Mexico for the tale of two Mexican woman who get caught up in the evil machinations of an American railroad company who want to build rail tracks across Mexico, not caring how they go about getting hold of the land they ...  Read the complete review