One Man’s Hero is Another Man’s Traitor

Title: One Man’s Hero is Another Man’s Traitor

Description: Today, Steve and Jacob Herr try to find something to like about the 1999 film, One Man’s Hero. This film tries to tell the story of the San Patricio Battalion. Does it succeed or is it a nightmare of history in film?

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Jacob Herr, actor and historian
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"Crossing the Chasm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Begin Transcript:

Thank you again for listening to Beyond the Big Screen podcast. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast network. Of course, a big thanks goes out to Jacob Herr. Links to learn more about Jacob and his history themed merchandise can be found at trendinghistory.com or in the Show Notes.
In this episode, we talk about the 1999 film One Man’s Hero based on the history of the San Patricio Battalion in the Mexican American War. In the last episode, Jacob led us through the real history and background of this fascinating story. Listening to that episode only makes this one even better!
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Another way to support Beyond the big screen is to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. These reviews really help me know what you think of the show and help other people learn about Beyond the Big screen. More about the Parthenon Podcast Network can be found at Parthenonpodcast.com. You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen, great movies and stories so great they should be movies on various social media platforms by searching for A to z history. Links to all this and more can be found at beyond the big screen dot com. I thank you for joining me again, Beyond the big Screen.
[00:00:00] I'd like to welcome back. Jacob heard to beyond the big screen, Jacob has been on to talk about Billy, the kid and film and in history and in the last episode. So I highly suggest you go back and listen to the last episode. He gave us a ton of background and context on the San Patricio battalion from the Mexican-American war.
Today, we are going to talk about the 1990. Film one man's hero, a film that dramatizes the events of the San Patricio battalion during the, the Mexican American war. And like I said, I highly encouraged people to go back and listen to our episode on the history of the St. Patrice CEO's. Catholic deserters from the U S army to the Mexican army during the Mexican-American war.
I really think you'll enjoy it. But, um, just to set things up for today in this 1999 film, starring Tom Berenger, what's the very short story of the San Patricio. So the [00:01:00] very short, uh, nutshell version of the, uh, San Patricio, they were a group of immigrants. Most of them, uh, associated with, uh, Catholicism, but others just trying to seek new life in America and winding up in the military at the outbreak of the Mexican American war.
And. Through the circumstances of the conflict. Many of these immigrants had ended up, uh, deserving the U S army making their way to Mexico and then offering their services to the Mexican military because they found they found a stronger connection. Culturally to the Mexican people then to the United States.
Now this film at stars, as we said, Tom Berenger has Sergeant Lieutenant, captain, John Riley. Uh Berenger. He almost makes a, made a career out of playing the grizzled army Sergeant. And this time he does it with an Irish [00:02:00] accent, we have a . De Alameda, he plays Courtine on. I found him as kind of the shining star of the movie for me, even though his part's kind of almost an explicable, but I think that as an actor, he did a wonderful job and, um, de Alomeda is actually a Portuguese actor and a shout out to, uh, a great friend of the show and a personal friend.
On Tonio from Portugal who pointed this out to me. And then the other main star, I guess, or the movie you could say is Daniella Romero who plays in Marta. The love interest in this really strange love triangle between Kortina Tom Berenger's, Riley character, and then Marta. And she was a famous Mexican musician of the eighties and nineties, I guess it's really hard to find a place.
Dart with this movie, I guess for me it happens. It's one of my first questions of the movie is [00:03:00] really upfront. And the movie Sergeant Riley, he turns on a dime w I, and he desserts from the army. He's pretty cool with the army. If he's putting the, uh, the, as a us Sergeant, he's putting people in their place.
He has like one kind of sorta negative interaction with his, uh, commander and then like, boom, bang, bang keys deserted the us army he's and he's fighting for the Mexican army. I have to imagine in history. And we talked about in the last episode, it didn't happen that quickly, but why do you think in the movie it, they did it that quickly.
Um, two reasons. Uh, bad writing. And, uh, secondly, uh, when you're trying to take a history that in courses, multiple years and multiple different political and social environments, and you have to put them together into this two-hour movie that you're going to show to the public and try to make money off of it.
[00:04:00] There's a lot to cram in. And that's, I think that's one of the big problems when you have this dramatic shift in. Less than 10 minutes into the movie, it comes off as very awkward. And very poorly written and here's, um, anomaly that I found out about the writing of the movie. Apparently the guy who had written the script, his name was Milton S Gelman.
He had actually had a history of writing for television, not an exclusively. Fifties, Western television that we had talked about in our Sam Peck and Paul pat Garrett, and Billy, the kid episode, he wrote episodes for tombstone territory, Gunsmoke that entire sub genre of television in the fifties and sixties.
Now here's the kicker. He actually passed away in 1990. So he never actually got to see [00:05:00] this script that he created. Turn into the final product. And so it must have just been bouncing around from one studio to another, before it was picked up by the director and the producer, uh, LanSchool. It makes a lot of sense because it does, it has.
Taste and appeal of a Western, but not in a good way either. I just, I love to get your thoughts on this because you're an actor and have done stage and probably have a ton more experience and education in this, but it seemed the whole theme of the movie is a tight shot. Everything is zoomed in to an you on these, like.
Moments and you miss the whole big picture, like all the action it zoomed in and we'll get into it. But in the battle of Churubusco you get no sense of the battle. It just looks [00:06:00] like there's like 10 guys on each side going at it. And it just seemed the whole movie to me is it's two zoomed in and you get no idea of the big picture.
Yeah. And now granted, I have seen some movies where that is actually used to your advantage, where you have very, a very small amount of extras or main characters. And you're trying to encompass a historical battle that had thousands or tens of thousands of people, you know, shooting at each other and hacking each other to death.
Um, but when you're trying to capture it on film, Um, one of the ways that you can try to make things look larger than what you really have to work with is that you use the camera almost as if the camera man is like another person in that battle. Um, Sergei Eisenstein did it in Alexander Nevsky and even, uh, I know another famous director had done [00:07:00] it in an independent project.
Orson Welles did it in chimes at midnight, 1965. The difference though, is that when you're using cinematography like that, you're trying to get a first person perspective where everything has to be clear, everything you need to have an established sense of what is at stake. And a connection to the characters.
We're not connected to these characters because they're so poorly written. They're not characters, they're caricature and because everything is so hectic, we have no idea. What's. I thought that was, I felt like a day Alameda. Kortina almost Telegraph that he made a line while Berenger is Sergeant Riley, he's injured and Marta's rehabilitating him.