A spoof of spaghetti westerns with the perfect speghetti western score by Eric Serra, very little beyond the score is successful about Bandidas (2006).

Don Diego's beautiful daughter Sara (Salma Hayek) was educated in Europe where she learned not only to be ladylike, but learned also horsemanship, archery, etc., so she's pretty tough for a rich girl.

]When her daddy is murdered by bad-guys serving east coast American banking interests, in order to take over land rights, Sara finds herself an angry ex-rich girl in need of vengeance.

Maria Alvarez (Penelope Cruz) is a farmer's daughter, a rough & tumble tomboy with a devoted super-smart horse that obeys her slightest command. The land-grabbers kill her father, too, & she finds herself an angry ex-farmgirl in need of vengeance.

An early forensic scientist turns up, trying to intrude new crime fighting techniques into the American Southwest & Mexico. He'll come in handy in case the girls decide to follow the law. In the meantime they'll rob banks in order to give to the poor.

It's mostly comedy antics between scenes of action & gunplay, with narry a question but that the girls will win, so there's certainly no suspense or suprises. The humor tends not to be successful either.

The stars are cute as buttons all butched up & it's nice to see Mexican characters actually played by women for whom Spanish is a first language.

Endearing as they are as performers, there's simply no way their camping it up can save a film this bad.

Hayek & Cruz do have comic potential in them but the stuff written for them is just so lame. If you could've seen them doing all this shtick on a really big screen (nothing so small as a multiplex theater screen) with a packed audience merely delighted to see Hispanic gals as gunslinging cut-ups, it might've been a fun shared experience. But at home on dvd, it has to stand on its own merits, & it has few of those.

The fetish value for all girls-with-guns pervs is fully served. But anyone who required a halfway decent story with their dose of sexy outlaw ladies will have trouble squeezing their way to the end of this big turd.

copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl