Outlaws - For Greater Glory (2012)

Gawd, what splendid photography. Spacious, craggy. and sunswept Central Mexico where the Cristados fought for the freedom to practice their religion in the late 1920. It's the kind of place you'd like to retire to in order to avoid the humidity of Miami Beach, the urban sprawl of Southern California, and the increasing congestion of Arizona. It's so easy to visualize the reward after a lifetime of hard work. Oh, Camarero -- another margarita, por favor? It's so picture-postcard pretty that the epic scenery almost overwhelms the tense and action-filled story of the last phase of all those Mexican revolutions of one hundred years ago.Ruben Blades is President Calles, who passed a series of laws that looked very much like an attempt to secularize Mexico and eliminate Catholicism. The reasons can only be guessed at. The church was a powerful moral and political force. Maybe Calles thought it was a little too powerful. The church also owned an awful lot of land and other valuables.In any case Blades gives an innovative and thoughtful performance as a leader who could easily have been shown as no more than another one of those evil swarthy people with shiny big teeth and greasy locks.His performance is matched by almost everyone else in the cast, perhaps with the exception of Oscar Isaac who, like most of the other principals, is of Hispanic origin but who struck me as an American guy struggling with a Spanish accent. As the first priest to be executed by firing squad, the ancient Peter O'Toole delivers the thoroughly believable goods. The ostensible hero is Andy Garcia as the historically real General Enrique Gorostieta, an atheist who was hired to lead the revolt. Garcia is no longer a sleek handsome youth but age has made him more impressive. And, in fact, Gorostieta WAS hired to organize the resistance, and he demanded a good sum as well as insurance for his family.That's one of the film's more admirable points -- the way there are these little inserts of coarse history. Calles, the "bad guy", offers peace terms that seem reasonable, but Gorostieta is too proud to accept them. The revolt was finally settled after Gorostieta's death, essentially based on the same agreement he'd rejected, with the intervention of the United States ambassador, who was Charles Lindbergh's father-in-law. As part of the agreement, the US provided the Mexican government with machine guns and Mexico in turn agreed to protect American oil interests. See? Nothing is altogether cut and dried, and you have to respect a movie that takes on the challenge of displaying ambiguity in its characters.Not that there's ever much doubt in the mind of the ordinary viewer about which side is good and which is bad. The movie may be complicated but human judgments aren't. So freedom of religion is "good" while the suppression of freedom is "bad." The story illustrates the point that sometimes religion is worth killing and dying for. I wonder how the film would have turned out if the religion had been an Islamic sect.The director doesn't match the majestic scenery, the perceptive performances, the credible art direction, and the skillful make up and wardrobe. John Ford shot the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in long shot. No such restraint here. The director does his best to push all the thoroughly commercialized emotional buttons. When O'Toole is bulletized, the camera cuts to a closeup of his agonized face, his features cut off in mid prayer. When a young boy is murdered we here the thud of the knife hilt against his back and there is a close up of his agonized face. The camera lingers on him as he falls to the ground before the coup de gras. Important deaths are in slow motion, sometimes VERY slow motion.It almost seems as if the screenplay and the direction are at odds with one another -- the screenplay yearning for a combination of action and character, along the lines of "Lawrence of Arabia," while the direction aims for a simple and successful movie about good guerrillas fighting tyranny,.

For Greater Glory was a great movie. The movie trailer made it look as boring as mess, and the reviews on here made me not even want to go to the theater let alone park in the parking lot. There were some slow parts of the movie but that was rare. The movie was the total opposite of a History lesson or Hot air and I loved it and this is coming from a 16 year old girl. To tell you the truth I cried once during the movie, but in order to find out why, you have to see the movie for yourself. Forget these reviews about how crappy and stupid it is. It's great, but only you can be the judge of that because everyone has their own preferences. In my opinion, you should see this great and inspiring movie.

History is written by Hollywood but i get bummed out on movies where the heroes lose. The acting was good, the story was awesome, the fight scenes were well made this is a grade A movie. The only thing i had a problem with was the long drawn out talking and planning with the characters. It was just like the writers slapped something together to make the film longer? For me the kids death scene was to much as well. There were no women fighters as well it just showed them cooking and smuggling ammo. In the real wars the women fought along side of the men that is why Mexican women are so tough. So i kind of felt it was a little disrespectful towards the women who did fight along side of the men in these wars. This was a very important lesson in history and now we can see why our founding fathers wrote in our Declaration of Independence the importance of freedom of religion. Good movie i wouldn't pay at the movies (10 dollars) to see it but i would definitely rent it on a rainy day from Redbox (99 cents) and watch it. It would have been a better movie if it was more realistic.

You can tell that a lot of the people involved in "For Greater Glory" really believed in what they were doing but unfortunately that doesn't cancel out the film's glaring weaknesses. FGG tries to tell too many stories at once and as a result, the entire production seems to meander endlessly without getting to any point. There are, by my count, five major sub-plots in FGG besides the central story of General Gorostieta (Garcia's character). Even at 144 minutes, the movie just doesn't have enough time to deal with all of this material and in trying to do so, it bogs down and doesn't even tell Gorostieta's story all that well. To me, the big change of heart the General had at the end seemed to come out of nowhere.Also not helpful, given that it's a war movie, is that the numerous action scenes are not well paced. Another minor prob was that Eve Longoria was not believable at all as Gorostieta's pious Christian wifey. Yet another weakness was the relationship between Peter O'Toole (as an old priest) and Mauricio Kuri (as a cute, little altar boy). In this day and age seeing a Catholic priest kissing and stroking the brow of an altar boy is freaky to say the least. Unless you're a very devout Catholic, the scenes between them are probably going to creep you out. People of a saltier temperament may laugh at loud...On the plus side, the cinematography is often beautiful. Andy Garcia gives a good performance and has enough screen time to make seeing FGG worthwhile for his fans.