"Bandidas": Wild Women, Wild West

Luc Besson has more than proven himself to be a renaissance man throughout his cinematic career. A filmmaker who's jumped around from genre to genre, from historical epics (The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc) and slick action movies (La Femme Nikita) to sci-fi opuses (The Fifth Element) and family flicks (Arthur and the Invisibles), Besson is now tapping the relatively untouched (perhaps for a good reason) waters of the Western comedy in co-writing the period adventure Bandidas. Though the flick doesn't exactly have the freshest script in recent memory, so predictable that you've already seen the movie without having seen it, Bandidas still isn't without its share of spunk, a few little hints of spirit scattered throughout the production.

Taking place in the wild west -- of Mexico, that is -- Bandidas centers around two feisty women whose backgrounds couldn't be anymore different. Sara (Salma Hayek) is the cultured daughter of a local don, eager to return to Europe to immerse herself further in polite society. On the other hand, Maria (Penelope Cruz) is a free-spirited farm girl who's angered over the fact that a big, bad, American railroad flunkie named Jackson (Dwight Yoakam) is snatching up land from all the decent, hard-working townspeople. Things take a turn for the personal when Jackson kills Sara's father and almost does in Maria's papa. With the former fueled by revenge and the latter determined to fight for the rights of her fellow peasants, Sara and Maria end up teaming together to strike back against Jackson the best way they can: robbing the very banks he's taken over. After receiving a few pointers from a retired gunslinger (Sam Shepard), the duo sets out on their criminal quest and quickly become the area's most wanted women. But their streak of heists comes with a price, as Jackson becomes increasingly determined to protect his amassed assets, and a bright but bumbling crime expert (Steve Zahn) is brought in to help put a stop to the ravishing bandidas' crimewave.