Texas Rangers

The acting is great, the director did a great job and its a cool, typical cowboy film. If you like westerns watch it, if not i recommend watching it on a friday night if your plans have collapsed. You wont regret it...trust me

From the opening shots through every scene acted out afterward NOTHING that is depicted in this movie EVER happened. It is a worse distortion than "Tombstone." I don't know where to start. For openers, the actor portraying McNelly admonishes a Ranger who is about to leave the service that he is "riding a Ranger horse and saddle, wearing Ranger clothes and carrying a Ranger gun," and if he leaves he will be arrested for theft. Anyone who knows squat about the Rangers of that day knows they had to bring their own horse, tack, weapons and clothes and then they would be considered for the service. Using Ranger badges for target practice is absurd beyond words. At that time the Rangers HAD NO badges. Just a letter stating they were Rangers. The makers of this movie either did not know or care. All a Ranger had to do to quit is ride away with what he brought. Also, John "King" Fisher was not a Mexican. He never shot down a crowd at a cattle auction. Leander McNelly's assignment in the Nueces Strip was to stop Mexican raiders from stealing cattle in Texas. His run in with John "King" Fisher was incidental and no shots were fired. McNelly and his men rode out to Fisher's ranch, arrested him and turned him over to a local sheriff. Days later they met Fisher and some of his men on the trail. Turns out Fisher had a friend who was a local judge and the judge let him bond out. McNelly had no authority to override that and Fisher went free for a time. The Black man McNelly took into his band was a former slave named Ben Kinchlow. He was hired as a tracker at no pay,just meals and equipment. When the shooting started between McNelly and the Mexican raiders, Kinchlow held the horses. The Mexican General was an officer in the Ruales, not the Mexican army, and he had no connection with Fisher. He was killed in the first shoot out with McNelly's men. The pistols McNelly's men used were black powder five shot revolvers. The pistols used in the movie had not been invented at the time. The rifles they used were single shot, black powder muzzle loaders. It wasn't until around three years after McNelly raided Mexico that the Rangers were given 1873 Winchesters. Over all the movie is an almost amusing "western" shoot-'em-up. The kind kids paid 15 cents to see back in the 1950s. It has nothing to do with the Texas Rangers. I don't know where the movie was filmed, but I know the land from Corpus Christi to Brownsville to the Rio Grande and is is an ancient sea bed, flat as a football field as far as you can see. This movie could have been titled "Leo Gorcey and the Dead End Kids" and the title would have been no more non-related than calling it "Texas Rangers."

All the elements to makes this a great genre movie are present here, especially in its formulaic but yet promising story premise. Then where did it go wrong? By the characters and cast for starters.

The movie has an impressive cast and most do a more than fine job. It's ironic that however the actors I were most worried about (Usher Raymond, Ashton Kutcher) did a great job playing their roles and the actors I was most confident about (Dylan McDermott, Tom Skerritt, among others) were miscast in the movie. But disappointing or not, every character in the movie lacked some good development and background. The main character (played by James Van Der Beek) start off promising but as the movie progresses you more and more begin to wonder to yourself what makes the main character so special or even relevant for the story. Dylan McDermott is a good actor and he also for most part is good in his role but he just isn't convincing enough as an experienced tough dying gunslinger. It makes you wonder why Robert Patrick and McDermott didn't switched roles in this movie. It would had made the story at least a bit more believable. The main villain is being played by Alfred Molina. Perfect you would think. The character however seriously lacks some development and depth which makes him a pretty shallow and way too uninteresting main villain for the movie. And then there are the actors who are just simply underused in the movie, such as Tom Skerritt. I mean does he even have lines in this movie? Cause I really can't remember any. So poor casting and character treatment all around for this movie.

They tried very hard to make this movie a cool action movie, also with a bombastic action score from Trevor Rabin. But however the movie is lacking in way too many action sequences to make this a good genre movie. They also desperately tried to make the action moments cool, with quick shots and cuts, that however really don't add up to each other and instead make the movie an incoherent one when it comes down to its action. The movie as a whole has poor editing all around. It almost seems as if this movie wasn't even shot entirely and the movie was not put together until in the editing room, when it was too late to do some pick up shots.

Despite it's promising premise, nothing in the movie really works out the way it was supposed to. It really is too bad because in its core this movie really had potential. But perhaps they should had known better not to touch the Western genre, that has been pretty death by now for the few past decades. This movie now is nothing more than a still somewhat watchable movie for on a rainy afternoon, that perhaps should had gone straight-to-video immediately instead.

Perhaps best watchable for the die hard genre fans only, everyone else can better just skip this one.

4/10

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TEXAS RANGERS is a movie that has the production values of a direct-to-video release and a cast of TV stars that give incredibly weak performances. I remember hearing about this movie way back in 1999 when DAWSON'S CREEK [which stars James Van Der Beek who plays Lincoln Rogers Dunnison in this movie] was only in its second season. It came out in November of last year and although I didn't get to see it when it finally came to theaters, but I did see it this weekend when I saw it on the new releases shelf at Blockbuster. It wasn't an awful movie, though it's one that I think should have just gone straight to video in stead of having a theatrical release. Maybe in a few years if this movie starts being shown on cable or gets special DVD treatment, more people will see it and it will have a small cult following. I wouldn't recommend it, yet if you are a fan of shoot 'em up westerns, you'll probably enjoy this.

I don't know why people are saying this is a horrible movie. It's actually a very enjoyable movie, but was a bit short, and short on character development. The actors do decently for being mostly TV actors, and the scenery was great, as well as the music. And it doesn't suffer from pacing problems. I almost wish I could have seen it in the theatre. Overall a good movie. As far as historical accuracy, I don't know, but Hollywood has been known to extend the truth a bit. For the most part, however, it is fairly believable. Don't listen to people that say it's a waste of time, make your own decision, but I believe it's at least worth a rental if not more.