Texas Rangers (2000)

good enough for the big screen

the story, characters, actors, and scenery are great!
and the action is some of the best I've seen in ANY western!

this is a must see, that I'm sure you'll want to keep January 10, 2008

Run, Don't Walk ... Away from this Movie

I will start out saying I am a native Texan and have some bias in my review of this movie.
That said, this movie is a very fragrant pile of horse manure. The movie claims to be based on fact, and then throws all the fact out the window to tell a sickeningly PC morality tale. Be aware that the only "facts" in this movie are some of the character names.
Here is a list of some of the more glaring inaccuracies:

1. McNelly's Special Force of Rangers was not a bunch of kids. They were mostly seasoned frontiersman, and George Durham stated in his book that the only reason he was allowed to join was that his father had served under McNelly in the Civil War.

2. King Fisher might have been ( and probably was ) a criminal. However he was also the elected sheriff of his county and highly thought of by many in the area. McNelly tried to arrest him several times, but could never make it stick due to lack of evidence. The two certainly never had a pistol duel. King Fisher was asassinated, along with the famous gunfighter Ben Thompson, coming out of a theater in San Antonio, TX many years later. And he certainly never massacred the citizens of a town.

3. Captain Richard King ( called Duke in the movie) was never captured by bandits and was certainly never hung by them. The name change is probably the result of the King Ranch not wanting anything to do with this travesty of a movie.

4. There were no African American Rangers serving with McNelly. The only black man with the force was the cook. ( Stereotypical, but true ) I imagine Usher's character was added to boost ticket sales and to placate Hollywood's PC paranoia. I don't know who dreamed up the "scout" and "rifleman" ranks, but it's complete b.s., they were simply rangers.

5. This movie was filmed in Canada, which looks nothing like South Texas. I live in South Texas, and it is semi-arid brush country. Not very photogenic, I assume.

6. The main culprit behind all the unrest along the border at that time was a man named Juan Nepomuncio Cortinas. He was a former bandit, Governor of the state of Tamualipas, and a general in the Mexican army. The bandit gangs were encouraged and sanctioned by the Mexican government, not Anglo outlaws.

There are other gaffs, but I am tired of listing them. My main gripe is the portrayal of McNelly and his men being loose cannons who just didn't give peace a chance. The border was in a state of undeclared warfare at this time and McNelly did what had to be done to stop it. He was not a cop, he and his men were soldiers. The Rangers at that time were not a law enforcement agency, that came later. ( They also didn't wear badges.)
In short, read George Durham's "Taming the Nueces Strip" or Walter P. Webb's "The Texas Ranger's" for the real story. Toss the movie in the pasture for fertilizer. September 13, 2006

I LOVE THIS MOVIE!!!

i watch a lot of movies and although i don't write much reviews,but i just had to write one for this movie...i like it so much that i watched it maybe every day for a week!!!..:))...it's one of the best movies i've ever seen,maybe not good in a sense of art or whatever,but it's a story for the heart and i love it...i can say that the caracters of James Van Der Beek and Dylan McDermot are so cool and sexy and although i dont know the history about the Texas rangers,i did like the theme...anyway,cool movie.................... April 11, 2006

Distorting Texas Rangers History

I've read quite a few books lately about the Texas Rangers, including 'Taming the Nueces Strip' by George Durham, on which this film is supposedly based, and 'Texas Ranger' by N A Jennings, on whom the character of Lincoln Rogers Dunnison is obviously based. Jennings' book, as he himself admitted, is not wholly truthful, yet his character (Dunnison) is made the hero of the film, while Durham's character (given his real name) is a foil to Dunnison. Jennings lasted two years in the Rangers before going back east and never rose above private (and secretary to McNelly), while Durham lasted a whole lot longer and fought alongside McNelly with distinction. Yet in the movie Durham is made to look an excitable idiot, while Dunnison becomes a Ranger captain. Why the scriptwriters should have chosen to do this is a mystery.

Dylan McDermott as Captain Leander McNelly gives a very good performance, as does Robert Patrick as Sergeant John Armstrong (who captured John Wesley Hardin in later years). Alfred Molina's performance as a grinning King Fisher is neither menacing or cruel - just inept. The real King Fisher was confronted by McNelly but always escaped justice at the time.

The young McNelly made his reputation as a leader in the Civil War and further enhanced his reputation as a Ranger captain in the Nueces Strip. He once led a daring (and illegal) raid into Mexico to retrieve stolen Texas cattle from bandits but his men were never massacred by bandits, despite a few close shaves in Mexico.

Jesus Sandoval was a vengeful sadist, whose wife had been killed by Mexican bandits, but this character hardly figured in the movie (his gruesome exploits could not have been shown anyway).

The true story of McNelly and his rangers in the strip of land between the Rio Grande and the Nueces River in Texas has all the ingredients for a great action movie, so why did the director and scriptwriters put together this distorted tale? I just don't get it. I enjoyed watching the movie and was stirred by the final scene, where the rangers ride out from the Dukes (King) ranch, but all too often I was annoyed by the tampering with history and King Fisher figuring far too large in the story. July 8, 2005

Texas Hot Sauce needed for this dry piece of meat!

Does anyone have any sauce for this rotted piece of meat I would like to call a film? It has left this dry taste in my mouth that I feel only some A1 or actual oxen blood would be able to quench. Seriously, this was one of the worst excuses for a western film that I have seen in a very long time. I grew up watch the "Duke" with my father and was always impressed with the vast landscape of the uncharted America and the troubles that faces these pioneers on a daily basis. I expect to see that same quality or better in the westerns that are made today because we have the technology to make them stronger, more entertaining, and powerful, but I guess Texas Rangers decided to go a different route. They decided to hire a TV director and a bunch of TV stars to help create that sense of reality in the film. So, instead of seeing Texas through the eyes of the adventuresome, we witnessed Texas through a sound stage in Hollywood as our youth of the WB whimpered in their trailers and thought about the girls of tomorrow. Who decided on final casting for this film? I know the Weinsteins were not behind this, or were they? This was the biggest hurdle to overcome in this film, and while I spent most of my energy on that, I discovered that there were actually more hurdles to follow. The story coupled with the poor production was another hit to this already devastating picture.

Let's talk about the actors that chose to place their names to this picture. How about I actually start with a quote from Dylan McDermott from the supplemental features of this DVD. He says something along the lines of, "Material like this doesn't come around everyday, and when it comes to your door, you have to take it because you never know when it will be around again." Can we be certain he was talking about Texas Rangers? I wonder how much he was paid for that sound bite. The material was rated second worst behind the acting in this film. Anyone with a 4th grade reading skill could see this. I guess McDermott had someone else reading his work for him. While I would say that McDermott was the only one holding this film, he continually dropped it on more than one occasion. His character was decent, but not the greatest hero that I have seen emerge from the Mason-Dixon line. I think what hurts him the most was that he had to work next to James Van Der Beek, who never felt like a hero to me. I never really watched Dawson's Creek, but I have this feeling that he brought some of his character from the television show to the film. It was embarrassing to see him act, especially during his climactic ending that seemed more like amateur night at the local bar instead of acting. Can we be certain that this wasn't community theater we were witnessing, except with a bigger budget? The same can be said for Randy Travis, Usher (in a very pathetic role), Kutcher (suffers miserably from miscast syndrome), and Molina (typecast for the paycheck, and it was very obvious in this film). I think that most were so excited to be working with their friends, that they forgot that this was an actual paying role and they would need to put some work into it. Even Rachael Leigh Cook was absurd. Her final speech in the film had me laughing hysterically, and it wasn't intended to be funny in the least bit. Miner completely miscast this entire film, and it is obvious from the revenue that nobody else was buying it either.

With no support from the actors the story was sure to fall, and it did. There was nothing spectacular or original about the story. I have even read articles that state that the overall story behind this film was false and very fabricated. How can you take yourself seriously when you are trying to make a true story from fiction? Only Charlie Kaufmann could successfully do this and I did not see his name anywhere on the credits. This was a shoddy piece of workmanship that does not deserve to be called either a "western" or a "adventure" or a "drama". I would only use the word "junk" to describe what Miner has created.

Overall, if you couldn't tell already, I didn't like this film. From the opening credits until the futile ending it was nothing but pain souring through my eyes and mind as I watched the story unfold. The ensamble acting proved that you could bring together all the wrong people and create 100% disaster. Nobody in this film seemed to fit in the least bit. With the actors completely miscast, the story seemed like wet paper. Nothing was of any substance. This was a poor excuse for a film, a poor excuse for history, and a poor excuse to try to appeal to the pre-teen girls of America. Hopefully we have all learned a lesson from this and can move on without any troubles. GULP. I hope...

Grade: * out of ***** January 17, 2005

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