Factual error: During the scene towards the end of the film where Alejandro is chasing Captain Love in the shack with the furnace at the mine, we see a pressure gauge just before the furnace explodes. The unit of measurement on the pressure gauge is shown as kg/cm2. Metric measures were not used in Mexico until eleven years after the film was set, and as California was a part of Mexico at the time, metric measurements would not have been used there.

The Mask of Zorro (1998)
Ending / spoiler
Directed by: Martin Campbell
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones
Montero and Love are killed. Elena and Alejandro (new Zorro) save all the workers just before the mine is blown up. De la Vega (old Zorro)dies from a gunshot while fighting Montero. Alejandro and Elena marry and have a baby named after Alejandro's brother and he tells him tales of Zorro like De la Vega did with baby Elena.
Lifesava
Three Finger Jack: Hey, basura! Up here! Well ain't you a sight for sore eyes. Full grown vultures walking around like real folk. Welcome! Welcome to Hell's outhouse! Now they call us the disappeared once but as you can see we ain't exactly disappeared. We've just been a little hard to find.
Captain Love: You. I know you.
Three Finger Jack: You bet you do, peckerwood! I'm the legendary Three Finger Jack and you are a bunch of murdering trash dressed up in fancy sweet smelling doodads!
Captain Love: Ignore him gentlemen. He's a common thief.
Three Finger Jack: Hah! As common as they come, but I ain't nothing to you "gentlemen." I steal gold. I steal money, but you... You steal people's lives. So damn you, and damn the whores that brung you!

Trivia: Catherine Zeta Jones, after her fight with Zorro, her dress rips off. She turns around to grab the hat and you can see her nipple for one frame.





Answer: He recognized that Bernardo was really Diego de la Vega and he realized that the young Zorro he had seen earlier could not have been Don Diego. He then deduced that the new Zorro looked similar to Don Alejandro (and was probably warned by Captain Love that Don Alejandro was hiding someting) and made the decision.