Texas: Poder e Corrupção

Let's start with the similarities of the book and the movie, James Michener's name appears on both and it is set in the early days of Texas. From there, only the character's name resemble anything from the book. Granted there are a few good actors(Stacy Keach,David Keith), They are far outnumbered by ones that should seek work in B-grade horror flicks. The camera work was so bad I could swear some of the battle scenes looked like old footage from a 50's movie. The Writers took a magnificent story about the history of Texas and made into something I could see on Rawhide or The Rifleman. All in all, This was a big disappointment

It is a fairly historical film. It has pretty good acting. Good battle and effects. But it does not give you an idea on all the battle. Goliad (where the prisoners get shot) was just as good battle as the Alamo.All in All,,,A very good film on the Texas independence. Maybe not a classic but good enough to watch.

The Texas revolution must be taken in the context of being just one of several local revolutions against Santa Ana's overthrow of the 1826 Mexican constitution. For this reason, many Texas hispanics fought on the Texan side. Similarly, Edina de Zavala was one of the two main movers for the preservation of the Alamo and in the Daughters of the Texas Revolution.

While military disasters, the Alamo and Goliad did convince Santa Ana that the Texans were no real military threat. This caused him to send part of his force back to Mexico. For one thing, it was difficult to supply such a large army in early spring in Texas so far away from its supply base. BTW, this was one of Houston's calculations.

Santa Ana also divided his remaining forces in an effort to resolve the revolt as quickly as possible and to make foraging easier. He also attempted to terrorize the Texans and anybody else in Mexico contemplating further revolt by executing all prisoners at Goliad and the Alamo. This miscalculation insured that no Texas soldier would ever surrender again.

Using a force of 8-900 men, Santa Ana then chased the Texican army across Texas. He eventually "trapped" them against water at San Jacinto, while waiting for the rest of his army to show up for the final blow. While Santa Ana was a pretty good soldier, given their past history, it apparently never occurred to him that the Texicans would actually take the initiative. The rest is history.

This movie is hokey as heck, but enjoyable if you're interested in the subject. Benjamin Bratt fans should especially like it; his character spans the entire movie and he turns in a charismatic performance. Stacy Keach does fine work as Sam Houston, and Rick Schroder is good as the emotionally conflicted young hero. Production is a bit spotty; quite a bit of the Alamo battle scene is footage from the old John Wayne movie!

Of course, the movie does not mention that one of the main "freedoms" the Texas settlers were fighting for was the freedom to own slaves (for some reason the "oppressive" Mexican government thought that was wrong). Funny, how those who exhort others to fight for freedom so often have their eye on exploiting or subjugating other people...some things never change, especially in Texas!

It's interesting that none of those who panned this movie were Texans. Whether or not it followed Michener's book closely is not the point; it followed history very well.

The whole reason Americans came to settle in Texas in the first place - as the movie made abundantly clear through Patrick Duffy's Stephen F. Austin - was that Mexico had not and could not properly settle such a vast land. Austin's colony was established at the invitation of Santa Anna.

It was only as Santa Anna systematically denied the Texicans - or Texians, if you prefer - basic rights that any citizen of any nation should reasonably expect from his government that they revolted. As the movie made clear, Austin did everything he could - with Sam Houston's concurrence - to keep his agreement with Santa Anna. The Mexican dictator literally drove him and the Texicans to revolt in order to give him an excuse to invade and slaughter them. His cruelty was best shown by what happened at Goliad - where the Texicans surrendered, only to be lined up and murdered after giving up all their weapons.

This last could have been emphasized a little more to show the bleak reality of trying to deal with this despot, but that's my only quarrel with the entire movie. I gave it an 8 - and wondered how IMDB managed to come up with a weighted average of 4.1 when 55% of the voters gave it a 7 or better.