"For Greater Glory" traces Mexico's Cristero War

By Stephen Holden / New York Times

“For Greater Glory,” an old-fashioned, Hollywood-style epic that overlays thundering hoof beats with a humid layer of piety, remembers the Cristero War, a bitter 20th-century conflict in which persecuted Roman Catholics rose up against the anticlerical Mexican

Largely played down by history books, the war, waged between 1926 and 1929, cost about 90,000 lives. Pope John Paul II later canonized more than two dozen saints and martyrs who fought on the Catholic side.

The movie is a much softer echo of fervent 1950s blockbusters with religious themes, like “The Robe,” set at the dawn of Christianity, in which humble true believers who are ready to sacrifice their lives for their faith stand up to their godless oppressors.

movies.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/movies/for-greater-glory-traces-mexicos-cristero-war.html