Texas Rising

This 5-part 10-hour TV mini-series starts with the defeat at the Alamo. It follows the fight between General Sam Houston (Bill Paxton) and Santa Anna (Olivier Martinez) as well as other stories. Santa Anna would eventually lose the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836 and be captured. The last episode would see the aftermath and the rise of the Texas Rangers.

There are some obvious accuracy problems even to a clueless guy like me. The question is whether it matters. The channel is called History Channel afterall. It ain't Lifetime and this is important history unlike "Hatfields & McCoys". One can play around with minor legends and folklore but if you play around with major history, it'd be nice to plaster the entire show with flashing neon signs saying THIS AIN'T TRUE.

The second problem is that the opening misdirected me by pontificating that all these various groups have differing goals. One of the first scene is Indians acting and portrayed as Indians from old Hollywood movies. That includes killing them easily and then mourning over the one white guy getting killed. It's very old fashion. At least, the Indians have one early scene discussing the politics and that saved the show at that point.

The first episode is very boring. Houston and his group are stuck in camp. I feel like some of his men who are itching to get moving. That idea could have been delivered in a more compelling way. It's not until the second episode that a big battle occur. This is still a show and it should try to hook the viewers right away. The obvious solution is to show some of the battle at the Alamo.

Just as the show seems to be picking up steam in the second episode, it loses me for good when the Mexican commander calls Colonel James Fannin a wetback. It is problematic on so many levels and it shows me the care with which the writers take. They think they're more clever than they actually are.

The actors in general are very good quality but they're not all necessarily shown in the best light. Bill Paxton is listless, I don't generally like Olivier Martinez and the years haven't been kind to Brendan Fraser. The acting is still generally good. The action scenes are also generally good for a TV miniseries. The production is relatively well made but those are not the problem.

I started watching this with very high hopes. As a proud Texan I was happy that the rest of the nation would get to learn more about our history, not just that there was a massacre at the Alamo but the whole story of the fight for Texas freedom.

HOW WRONG I WAS. The History Channel has taken Texas history and made it into a truly God-awful soap opera with a few historical names and events sprinkled in here and there. The facts are so washed out that this shouldn't even be called history. The least the History Channel could have done was film in Texas!! Its like they just said "F*ck it, everyone thinks Texas looks like this anyways" This is such a poor and vapid representation of the struggles that men and women went through for the republic of Texas. The History Channel can not seriously be expecting people to believe this is really how it happened.

I may not be a historian but I have done more than my fair share of research on Texas history and I do not recall Santa Anna having a French accent. Someone must have been drunk when casting some of these characters. And the story line skims over most of the characters, not really giving the audience to know who they were or why they are important to the story-line. The writers end up losing many important figures by simply trying to fit too many into this letdown of a TV series. Sad really. Quantity over quality it seems.

The only shining light this series has is Brendan Fraser and the truly terrifying Ray Liotta. They make this worth watching.

First I must say it was well shot and decent to good acting. And I do plan on watching the entire thing. But to enjoy this film you MUST forget everything you know about Texas history.

It is as inaccurate as it gets. It might as well be set in space... I really don't understand why they did this, because they "mess up" on some of the most basic and common knowledge history. And the true story itself is already such a strong story to begin with.

I mean if they wanted to do something fictional they could have based it around a fictional person within the historical events themselves. Instead they tell the story as if that's what happened. When in reality it's pure fiction.

From the opening scene it is entirely false. The whole thing... The Alamo didn't even look like that. They have the Alamo with a domed roof, which wasn't added until long after the war. That was not he flag that was flying at the Alamo... How do we know this? Because the flag the production used is FICTIONAL. That flag never existed prior to this show. They just made it up.

They also have the barracks the same height as the Alamo, it wasn't. They also have it right next to the Alamo, again it wasn't. The walls don't have palisades, which they did have during the siege.

More disturbing is that they have Emily West at the Alamo, she wasn't and that she had a brother who was both free and died at the Alamo. As far as we know she did not have a brother, nor do we know of any freed Black men who fought at the Alamo. And Emily West did NOT have any relations with Sam Houston... utter nonsense.

In fact, if she did have a brother he would have been in Connecticut where she was from and not Texas. She was an indentured servant under a 1 year contract of employment to James Morgan at a hotel in Morgan's Point on the Gulf Coast of Texas outside of Houston at the time the Alamo fell. She was captured by the Mexican Army in Mid April, over a month after the Alamo and held as a sex slave by Santa Anna. She was not a spy for the Texas army...

Then there is the entirely fictional character Lorca... Who survives the siege and goes on a murderous revenge killing spree... He never existed.

They go even further from reality when they have the "survivors" of the Alamo being transported to who knows where by the Mexican Army. That didn't happen. They were just left there. And they weren't attacked by Kiowa Indians. And the Rangers didn't rescue them.

I must mention that someone stated "this is East Texas" in reference to where Sam Houston was... the mountains and such. No, that is not East Texas... But Sam Houston wasn't in East Texas when the Alamo Fell. He was in between Gonzalez and Austin in the hill country. So that's actually accurate.

Originally he was to travel from Washington on the Brazos (Austin) to meet up with the forces from Goliad to come to the defense of the forces surrounded by the Mexican Army at the Alamo. But Fannin had some troubles enroute with wagons and cannons so he turned around and went back to Goliad. Houston then sent word to the Alamo that no forces would relieve them and orders to Fannin to retreat East and awaited their reply somewhere around Gonzalez. That's what's going on when that scene took place.

Acting is fine, story is ok, history is meh Was expecting quite a bit more, but from the network of Ancient Aliens I may need to lower the bar. Worth a background watch while working at home.

Like what the two other reviewers' comments on this short TV drama by the History Channel, I have to say that this time, they've missed a great opportunity to glorify part of the history when Texas fought its independence and its future. A very bad screenplay tried so hard to dramatize that epic era had miserably missed the mark and turned it into a soap opera-like superfluous farce.

We have some of the better and great actors who signed up to play important historical characters in this one, but they were completely wasted and ridiculed by the lousy screenplay and its play writers. The scenes are great, the views are grand, but what a lousy arrangement turned this drama into the shallow marshland.

Why, I have to ask the History Channel, why you have to put two young jerks and clowns in such serious drama as members of the Texas Rangers? What made these two young stupid jerks qualified as Texas Rangers? Why the screenplay writer(s) you hired had to ridicule the name and the reputation of the Texas Ranger? These two young jerks didn't care about the future but only led by their dick heads to pursuit a young woman nurse in Sam Houston's degenerated and low morale camp. These two clowns segments in the first part of this drama had undoubtedly turned lot of viewers off to take this TV drama seriously.

Then, again, when the fall and slaughter of Alamo news reached Houston's camp, only a very short of moment we saw those street mob-like so-called Houston's fighting soldiers took off their hats to show their condolences and their respect for the fallen comrades, then when at the nightfall, we saw the whole camp seemed to celebrate Alamo falling into Santa Ana's control. We heard music and dancing all around in the camp. And Sam Houston other than did some lip services to his fallen brothers, only concentrated to reunited with his secret lover. At that moment, I just couldn't help hearing my curse and the only thing I remembered was "WTF?!"

Some of the Texas Rangers were played by several more matured actors who indeed did a great job to portray the tough life style of being a Ranger, their loyalty to their principles, their toughness also inevitably moved me for a few moments in the 1st part of this drama, but once those two young jerks appeared, it's all went into the drain.

I have to tell History Channel here: When you tried to revive or to repaint a history picture, dramatize it with unnecessary crap would only ruin every effort you guys have tried to do in the first place; and overly dramatizing the whole picture could only jeopardize the whole nine yards. But such stupidity could ever be improved or be cured, even you know it? I really doubt it.