Just perfect...

Great Film overall

Good movie but grossly overrated

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Anyone who has studied the history of the Mexican-U.S. conflict will have no doubts come across the story of the St. Patrick's Battalion. It could have been made into an excellent movie, maybe even an Oscar contender, but instead it ends up like a bad B-Movie. Terrible acting, awful accents and worse of all are the action scenes, they made me cringe with embarrassment. My favorite part was when the credits came up at the end so I could check the director's name so I could avoid his future movies at all cost. It's a real shame though, if Scorcese or Spielberg had got their hands on the history of the St. Paddy's battalion they could have put together a fine cast and an excellent script. Let's hope like many movies, they decide to make a remake and let's hope someone can tell this fantastic historical event the way it should be told.

I am very fond of historical films, but I don't think that this film was never shown in Miami. I came across a promo tape at a video store. It was obviously made on a rather small budget, and it deals with a historically ambiguous topic, namely that of a group of recently arrived Irishmen that identified more with the Mexicans (whose country, like their native Ireland, was being colonized by English-speaking imperialists), and joined the other side. Mexico, after all, had promised them land, respect and citizenship. The Irish were white and therefore regarded as of higher status than Mexican indios and mestizos.I find the previous comments that the members of the St. Patrick's Brigade were traitors and deserved to be hung rather weird and devoid of historic knowledge as well as empathy. I suggest that such characters just see "Green Berets" again instead of any future film dealing with the US military.There was no mention of the war following and being a direct result result of the annexation of the bankrupt Republic of Texas in 1845 or of the Republic of the Rio Grande, which was also nominally independent (though recognized by no one) and divided Texas from Coahuila and Nuevo Leon. No one ever mentions the Republic of the Rio Grande other than in local border history, but it DID exist.The costumes were convincing, the sets were less so: neither Churubusco, where the main battle for Mexico City was fought, nor Mixcoac, where the brigadistas were hung, is in any sort of flat desert as depicted.In the Mexican War, both sides used black powder, and the major amounts of flash and light used in the battle scenes seems accurate in showing this.I was surprised that this film got so very little publicity. I suppose it went straight to cable TV and video because of a poor acceptance at its debut. Americans are still not ready to accept a film in which their history is shown as anything other than glorious and filled with heroes. We DID make fun of the Russians for doing the exact same thing back when they claimed to have invented everything (including ethnic diversity).I could say "You gotta see this film", but I won't because (a) it's not really spectacular, though a head and shoulders above the older John Wayne Westerns of the 1950's and (b) you will find it very hard see it. Of course the main characters all either die in battle,or are hung in disgrace. The major figure, John Reilly, was branded on both cheeks with a D for "deserter". The sentence was only one branding, but the first soldier branded him upside down.I wonder if it made any money in either Mexico or Ireland. In reality, it would have been a natural for an Irish or Mexican effort.

This is one of the most powerfully moving films I've ever seen. Maybe it does lack some technical expertise, but I got so totally lost in the storyline, I didn't notice that. This film is precisely what I appreciate so much about Tom Berenger: it seems that Tom Berenger can take a small episode of history and make it memorable--so memorable, in fact, that I've seen this movie only twice, but scenes from it keep playing in my mind.

It is a movie...so I expect there to be embellishments--in plot, especially, amongst other things. The acting? Well, I am not a movie critic...it was passable, not great, not horrible--most of the acting did seem flat and non-dimentional, however, you are getting just a glimpse of a few (a very few) of the major characters. What I do like overall, is, the fact that someone attempted to make a movie about this era of American History, especially, due to its pivotal role that the Mexican-American War would play in the years following the conclusion.On the historical facts of the movie, well, it has errors: for example, the Americans seem to "out-number" the Mexican forces--and as we all know the average ratio was between 3:2 and 3:1, in favor of the Mexican Army, in all the battles--which could have made the movie more spectacular--for the "bad" Americans--if they can be called that--something that was latent but not overt. As others have pointed out, it also does have a "Mexican" bias, but this is due to the arrangement of the plot of the movie...concerning the San Patricios Companies of Foreigners. I personally thought the biases of the "named" characters (at least the Americans) were "historically" correct--despite any gaffes in acting. Zachary Taylor (James Gammon) had his "damn the consequences" attitude, and Winfield Scott (Patrick Bergen) was also "true" to the history. The "Anti-Catholic" (not just Anti-Irish) sentiment as portrayed by the junior officers and non-comms in front of the Colonel of the 5th US Infantry Regiment, is also in line with the time. It is a shame that they could not work in more of the major characters (and a few of the Civil War Generals--in their baptism of fire). We see Scott, Taylor and Harney; It would have been nice to see others like Santa Anna, David Twiggs, William Worth, etc. as well as maybe Jackson as an Artillery Lieutenant moving his guns forward at Churubusco to take on the San Patrico batteries or Grant moving his men of the 4th Infantry forward, or even Lee reconoitering a position. However nice this may have been, it was extraneous to telling the movie-maker's story, and it was not to be.Not every movie can be a "Gettysburg" calibre movie...but considering the "attention span" of my fellow countrymen (most would not endure a 4 hour movie--let alone the subject matter), this movie trys to be entertaining, as well as, historically "honest". I say, "bravo".