James A. Michener's Texas
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Movie Reviews of James A. Michener's Texas
Movie Review: Texas
Summary: 3 Stars
While this book had some good story telling, the characters were not very well defined. Towards the end, it seemed he was just writing the story to get it over w/& to include as much history as he could in one place. Didn't seem very historically accurate. I also watched the movie of the same name/author & it was absolutely terrible.Movie Review: read the book!
Summary: 3 Stars
This movie version is so inferior. Michener is a genius and justice was not done to him with this movie.
The drama, the glory, the DUDENESS...oh, yeah! Yeeeeeee-haw!
Movie Review: mediocre, underwhelming and American-biased
Summary: 2 Stars
The Texas Revolution of 1835 to 1836, including the periods preceding and immediately following, are depicted in this 3-hour TV movie whose only redeeming value is shedding light and paying homage to Stephen Austin, the "Father of Texas" whose story and contribution to an Anglo-dominated Texas has been overshadowed by the legendary Sam Houston. The rest of the film is the usual "Santa Anna is a tyrant" storyline with short low-budget battle scenes and a weak attempt to show the Mexican perspective via a fictional Hispanic character displaying stereotypical Latin machismo. Anyone who knows Texan history will realize that the Anglo settlers/rebels did not fight just for basic civil liberties like habeas corpus but also for the right to own black slaves, something which "tyrannical" Mexico had abolished but which persisted in the "land of the free" USA. Politics aside, this movie is really talky, boring and showing very little of the Alamo defenders like Crockett, Bowie and Travis. It is recommended only for real history buffs interested in Austin and Houston and who do not come from Mexico. Everyone else should watch John Wayne's "Alamo", which at least has the decency to commend the bravery of Mexican soldiers acting as a tyrant's cannon fodder.Movie Review: Racist, Sexist, Untrue, and Boring to Boot
Summary: 1 Stars
While I wouldn't be able to speak to Michener's original work, not having read it, I am nevertheless willing to say that the movie adaptation is the worst kind of media. While purporting to tell the history of Texas, it manages to tell only the story of a few wealthy white men. In the entire movie, there are only four women characters, only two of which have more than one line. In all four cases, their sole goal appears to be the subsumation of their selves in their husbands.
As for the "thirty thousand Indians... mostly Cherokee" that Heston's narration mentions at the beginning, that is more or less all the attention they receive in the film. They are depicted once as raiding wagon train and once you see their aftermath on a homestead they've despoiled. Other than that, the movie treats Texas as if it were totally empty when the whites arrived to "civilize" it. And of African Americans, literally not one word or character. More than odd, considering that Texas was always going to enter into the Union as a slave state, and that the extension of the slave trade to their farms was one of the major boons of annexation for Texas. Lastly, Benjamin Bratt's character is made to deliver overtly racist lines directly aimed at the denigration of the Mexican character and spirit. He does nothing good for race relations, and indeed says things like "Mexicanos and Tejanos can never live together, they shouldn't have tried." Such lines are disrespectful in light of the fact that racism against Latinos is still endemic in Texas. The fact that this remains true is largely the result of depictions like this one, that only further racist views and stereotypes.
All in all, and as a white male whose family has been in Texas since the beginning of the state, I thought this movie made a mockery of my heritage. Simply leaving out the truth of our history to focus on "good, honest pioneering" is to tell far less than half the story.
Movie Review: Big scale subject,small scale film
Summary: 1 Stars
"An epic as big as the land that shaped it"...This is how "James A.Michener's Texas"is described on the dvd box.Wishful thinking at best..Produced by Aaron Spellings old production company in association with Republic pictures(which was owned by Spelling at the time and may still be so owned for all that I know),this is a imitation epic if there ever was one..The dvd cover features the battle of the alamo,a scene that is not repeated in the film..While David Keith(as Jim Bowie)and John Schneider(as Davy Crockett)are on hand the alamo battle scene(all 2 minutes and 13 seconds of it)takes place without them,being lifted whole from"The Last Command",a film that Republic pictures produced more than a half century ago..That "epic" featured Ernest Borgnine(among others) and during the scenes from "The last command" spliced in here you can see Borgnine fighting and stabbling his way on the alamo wall as the mexican soldiers breach it(gee,I wonder if they gave Borgnine any money for his unbilled and probably unintentional scenes in this film?)..
Stacy Keach(as Sam Houston)and Patrick Duffy(as Stephan Austin)are adequate,given the clunky lines that they are called upon to speak,while Benjamin Bratt(of Law & Order fame)is stereotyped as a mexican with mixed loyalties..Chelsea Field as a tough but tender pioneer woman more or less steals the show(but given the show itself that is really not so hard to do)..
All of the one-sided blather about freedom and democracy are rolled out in this film,ignoring the fact that the"fight for texas" was a land-grab by the anglos from first to last,one encouraged first by president Andrew Jackson and made final by President James Knox Polk..It was expansionist imperialism at best,with worse elements of bigotry and brutality mixed right in...
Not a"great" film...Not even a good one...