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'For Greater Glory' With Andy Garcia Breaks Every Rule In Hollywood


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andy-garcia-movie-on-mexico-breaks-hollywood-mold.htmInvestors Business Daily:

Hollywood puts out a lot of rubbish, but now and then something unexpected breaks through. Such as "For Greater Glory," a film that opens Friday and portrays Christianity, of all things, as heroic. Lead actor Andy Garcia talked with IBD about why it's different.

The film was originally called "Cristiada," a Spanish reference to a little-known rebellion in western Mexico from 1926 to 1929, where Christians rose up against a socialist secularist government that tried to stomp out religion in the name of "progress."

After peaceful protests failed, Mexico's "Cristeros" formed an army to fight the government in the name of defending their religious freedom. The three-year war cost 56,000 lives, but in the end, the Cristeros mostly prevailed.

Hollywood wouldn't be expected to touch a topic that put Christians in a heroic role.

But that isn't where the film's uniqueness starts: "Many Mexicans have never heard of the Cristiada," Garcia told IBD. The film was made not by Hollywood producers, he said, but by a Mexican producer who wanted to inform his countrymen about their own invisible past.

"It's a fairly taboo topic in Mexico, where the history has been swept under the rug," Garcia said. "They did it because they believed in it."

As for why they did it now: "These things can't be kept on the back burner any longer."

It was Mexico's close relations with the U.S., Garcia said, that enabled the film to reach U.S. shores as the producers checked out distribution channels, landed a big-name U.S. and Latin American cast, and decided to make the movie because they felt it could succeed. That in turn opened the door for unconventional details rarely seen in U.S. commercial films.

Priests, for instance, aren't shown as Hollywood normally portrays them — as martinets or perverts — but in the way most people know them: with a matter-of-fact ordinariness.

Peter O'Toole portrays a priest whose everyday kindness conceals a saintly willingness to die for his faith — an image that hasn't been seen in Hollywood since the 1940s.

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