By LISA GUTIERREZ
The Kansas City Star
With war ravaging his homeland, the retired Mexican general sits in his factory reading a newspaper story about Charles Lindbergh flying nonstop from New York to Paris.
He complains to a friend: Lindbergh is doing memorable things, while I am surrounded by pink soaps.
But you have a life full of memories, the friend consoles the decorated warrior.
“You live in your memories, you’re already dead,” grumbles the general, played by Andy Garcia.
Soon, Enrique Gorostieta Velarde is back on his legendary war horse leading thousands of his fellow Mexicans fighting for their religious freedom against the Mexican government.
“For Greater Glory,” which opens Friday, is the first big-screen portrayal of Mexico’s Cristero War, in which more than 90,000 people died from 1926 to 1929. Garcia, Eva Longoria, Peter O’Toole and Ruben Blades portray real people who lived and perished in the uprising.
Freedom-fighting rebels who called themselves “Cristeros,” soldiers for Christ, rallied the troops by crying “Viva Cristo Rey!” Long live Christ the King!
“I wasn’t aware that this actually happened,” the Cuban-born Garcia said in a recent interview, “which immediately made it extremely interesting to explore, because you’re dealing with a moment in history that was taboo to talk about.
“The director (Dean Wright) told me about some research and locations and some books about it … it’s easy to get behind the concept of a group of people fighting for liberty, religious or any kind of liberty.”
Mexico’s President Plutarco Elias Calles (Blades) sparked the uprising by rigidly enforcing and adding to anti-clerical laws written into Mexico’s constitution of 1917, which drove Catholics underground.
The “Calles Laws,” as they came to be called, deported foreign-born priests, imprisoned priests who criticized the government and made it illegal for priests to wear clerical garb.
“Mexico is under siege,” Calles warns government leaders as the movie begins. “Outcasts from Rome and from all over Europe are coming here to destabilize our country. … This situation, this evil, this threat … will not be tolerated.”
The movie follows Gen. Gorostieta’s uphill battle to mold “peasants in huaraches” into “an army for God.”
He complains to a friend: Lindbergh is doing memorable things, while I am surrounded by pink soaps.
But you have a life full of memories, the friend consoles the decorated warrior.
“You live in your memories, you’re already dead,” grumbles the general, played by Andy Garcia.
Soon, Enrique Gorostieta Velarde is back on his legendary war horse leading thousands of his fellow Mexicans fighting for their religious freedom against the Mexican government.
“For Greater Glory,” which opens Friday, is the first big-screen portrayal of Mexico’s Cristero War, in which more than 90,000 people died from 1926 to 1929. Garcia, Eva Longoria, Peter O’Toole and Ruben Blades portray real people who lived and perished in the uprising.
Freedom-fighting rebels who called themselves “Cristeros,” soldiers for Christ, rallied the troops by crying “Viva Cristo Rey!” Long live Christ the King!
“I wasn’t aware that this actually happened,” the Cuban-born Garcia said in a recent interview, “which immediately made it extremely interesting to explore, because you’re dealing with a moment in history that was taboo to talk about.
“The director (Dean Wright) told me about some research and locations and some books about it … it’s easy to get behind the concept of a group of people fighting for liberty, religious or any kind of liberty.”
Mexico’s President Plutarco Elias Calles (Blades) sparked the uprising by rigidly enforcing and adding to anti-clerical laws written into Mexico’s constitution of 1917, which drove Catholics underground.
The “Calles Laws,” as they came to be called, deported foreign-born priests, imprisoned priests who criticized the government and made it illegal for priests to wear clerical garb.
“Mexico is under siege,” Calles warns government leaders as the movie begins. “Outcasts from Rome and from all over Europe are coming here to destabilize our country. … This situation, this evil, this threat … will not be tolerated.”
The movie follows Gen. Gorostieta’s uphill battle to mold “peasants in huaraches” into “an army for God.”
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