You’d think that you’d have heard of a film starring both Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz. You’d think that Hollywood’s publicity mavens would be in high gear to make you know about it. Especially if the film was also produced by Luc Besson. You’d think that when the DVD of said film arrived in the mail unbidden that a critic might say, “Oh, yeah, I’ve been waiting to see this.” No, instead when Bandidas arrived in my mail box I had never heard of it, and upon researching it, wondered why.

It turns out that Bandidas, essentially a European production, was released to theaters in America solely through the Cinema Latino theater chain, something else I’d never heard of (it’s so hard to keep up, not despite all the info radiating technology, but because of it). Instead, Bandidas became a Fox almost-directly-to-DVD release, hitting the streets on January 9th and retailing for $27.95. Is it worth the purchase?

Well, it depends on the box (which my disc lacked). If the cover art emphasizes that Hayek and Cruz have obvious fun with their roles and that the film is a mad western romp, perhaps yes.

Joining Hayek and Cruz is like putting Brando and Dean in the same picture. The two hottest latina actresses in the world, they could have only made this film hotter if they rounded up Jennifer Lopez, Eva Mendes, Rosario Dawson, and Roselyn Sanchez, in a Hispanic remake of Bad Girls.

Along for the ride along are Steve Zahn as a ur-CSI criminalist (think Johnny Depp in Sleepy Hollow), the casual Sam Shepard as a shootist mentor who gives them lessons in bank robbing (think Robert Culp in Hannie Caulder), and Dwight Yoakam as the villain, attempting to channel Johnny Depp from Pirates but succeeding only in making himself an uncanny doppleganger of Clint Howard.If you’ve seen Louis Malle’s underrated Viva Maria (and aren’t all Malle’s films underrated?), you have a general idea of what Bandidas is all about. Basically, it creates a situation in which Hayak and Cruz start out as antagonists and end up partners in noble crime, especially after they take a page out of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid by leaping off a cliff together. Cruz is Maria Alvare, a girl of the soil whose father is wounded in a land grab implemented by Yoakam’s Tyler Jackson. Hayek is the highly educated and sophisticated Sara Sandoval, whose father is poisoned by Jackson as part of the same conspiracy. Together the two women go on a bank robbing run to break the strangle hold of the American imperialists over the Mexican economy. Zahn is Quentin Cooke, the criminalist summoned to catch the two looters.

Co-directered by Joachim Roenning and Espen Sandberg, their first feature, you’d also hardly know that this is a Luc Besson production. Only near the end, in a shoot out staged in a train car, do you get a hint of the visual creativity associated with Besson’s films and those of his subsidiaries (the scene uses some “bullet time”). Otherwise the film is straightforward western comedy, with a clean through line. It goes generally in the very direction you assume and want it to go. The best scene has Cruz and Hayek first meeting Zahn. Disguised as dancers they tie him to a bed and interrogate him, before deciding to use the helpless man as a kissing guinea pig, with Hayek leading the way for the supposedly innocent Cruz.

There is an English Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track and a Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround track in which you can hear the girls in their native languages. Plus English and Spanish subtitles. Number one supplement on the disc is a commentary by Hayek and Cruz that is unrevelatory but is girlish and fun, followed by a shortish making of, “Burning up the Set with Salma and Penelope,” and concluded by the theatrical trailer. Bandidas comes in both a widescreen and full frame version on the same disc.

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