For Greater Glory : Movie Review


For Greater Glory is the type of film that gives the screen epic a bad name. From its solemn speechifying to its overstuffed cast of characters and its battle set pieces, everything about Dean Wright's film not only announces itself as blandly "epic," but declares itself content to ape the tired tropes of numerous predecessors rather than build fresh interest into these cinematic standbys.

Perhaps the sheer rightness of the cause for which the film's protagonists fight should be enough to put over the half-baked material, but in dealing with a little-known historical event, the Cristero War that rocked Mexico for three years in the late 1920s, the moral superiority of these characters' positions is by no means a given. While the Cristeros fought against the repressive regime of President Plutarco Calles (Ruben Blades) for religious freedom, the fact that this religion is specifically Catholic and that the film seems to take that creed's excellence as a given makes the material a tough sell.

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Author : Andrew Schenker