`ZORRO' WIELDS CLASSIC ELEMENTS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

This is a test. A test to see if contemporary film audiences, their sensibilities pummeled by crude, overamped ``event'' movies for lo, these many summers, can appreciate a rollicking adventure that luxuriates in the last thing modern Hollywood associates with blockbuster entertainment: fine craftsmanship.

``The Mask of Zorro'' may not be a classic film, but it boasts all the classic movie virtues. Its story is, by turns, funny, exciting and heart-touching (Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, two of several credited writers, performed a similar trick for Disney's ``Aladdin''). Every shot is lovingly composed and suffused with a burnished beauty (Phil Meheux was the cinematographer, Cecilia Montiel the production designer). The players operate at a pleasing pitch, with just enough good acting and movie star showing off to be irresistibly infectious.

``Mask of Zorro'' even has a savvy, playful sense of history, both 19th-century California's and Hollywood's. Throughout the film, director Martin Campbell (``GoldenEye'') pays homage to the legends of the region (one segment could have been subtitled ``Show Me the Head of Joaquin Murieta'') and to the effective bits of both Zorro movies past and more recent fare, from the jaunty spirit of ``Raiders of the Lost Ark'' to the brooding undercurrents of ``Batman.''

But can all of this be appreciated in a film that moves at the speed of one horsepower, or where fencing prowess, not the fire of automatic weapons, is what the fighting's all about? Even though it climaxes with an explosion so big it reportedly broke glass in Mexican villages five miles away, ``Mask of Zorro'' is determinedly old-fashioned in its emphasis on one-to-one confrontations and human-scale action. Like its equally retro attention to quality, though, that makes the movie exciting in a very special way.

The perfectly cast Antonio Banderas is . . . well, not exactly Zorro. The Spanish nobleman Don Diego de la Vega, who took up the famous black cape and mask to fight colonial tyranny, is actually played by Anthony Hopkins.

But 20 years after Mexican independence - a period he's spent rotting in prison - Don Diego isn't quite his old, spry self. When his longtime nemesis, the corrupt former governor Don Rafael Montero (Stuart Wilson), returns to Alta California with a scheme to wrest the territory from Mexico, Don Diego escapes.

But he's not in shape to wreak revenge on the man who ruined his life - and, incidentally, kidnapped his infant daughter, Elena, now grown into an exquisitely beautiful woman (Catherine Zeta-Jones) who thinks she's Montero's offspring. That's where Banderas' Alejandro Murrieta comes in. An inept bandit whose own brother was killed by Montero's henchman, the Custer-like American mercenary Capt. Harrison Love (Matt Letscher), Murrieta needs a little work before he can take on the mutual enemy. So it's off to the Batca . . . er, Zorro's underground headquarters, where Don Diego trains the wild young peasant in everything it takes to effectively make the sign of the Z.

Banderas and Hopkins have a high time playing imperious mentor and overeager student. Banderas has an even better time enchanting Zeta-Jones' perpetually intrigued Elena, both as the masked man and in a third incarnation as a fake Spanish aristocrat. They enjoy an outrageous flamenco and an even naughtier swordslash striptease together. But Murrieta/Zorro is so busy battling whole barracks of bad guys, jumping off and onto speeding horses and rescuing enslaved miners that it's a wonder he has any time left for romance.

It's something of a wonder, too, that Campbell and company manage to work some truly moving bits about lost relatives and family loyalty into the swashbuckling proceedings. (In case you haven't guessed by now, Steven Spielberg was an executive producer).

But then, there's enough timTe to accommodate most anything the filmmakers would want to do. If it's possible to have too much of a good thing, ``Mask of Zorro'' is guilty; at 2-1/4 hours, the film's pacing sometimes gets more leisurely than an action-adventure's should.

But I don't know what coy gag, what breathtaking stretch of acrobatic swordsmanship, which texturizing social detail or elevating moment of human interaction I wouldn't miss from a tighter, speedier ``Mask of Zorro.'' Enough films go by too fast these days. This one is richer than the rest, and it's a treat to savor its indulgences.

THE FACTS

The film:``The Mask of Zorro'' (PG-13; some intense action and violence).

The stars: Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stuart Wilson, Matt Letscher.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Martin Campbell. Written by Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Randall Jahnsen and John Eskow. Produced by Doug Claybourne and David Foster. Released by TriStar Pictures.

Running time: Two hours, 16 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Three and One Half Stars.

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Photo

Photo: Antonio Banderas is a bandit-turned-hero in ``The Mask of Zorro.''