As generic as the title, this historical drama spares no cliche in depicting Mexico’s Cristero War of the late 1920s: the tight-knit family divided by politics, the sensitive priest urging children to fight for their beliefs, the hard-ass general on horseback exhorting his troops. It’s the sort of flat-footed period piece in which characters are constantly reading each other newspaper headlines or spouting bits of cultural knowledge that one would never mention in real life. (In one of the biggest howlers, Ruben Blades, playing Mexican president Plutarco Elias Calles, explains the origins of mole sauce to a U.S. ambassador.) Dean Wright, a veteran special-effects supervisor, directed; with Andy Garcia, Eva Longoria, and Peter O’Toole.
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