It's all true. HBO film about a very 'truth as strange as fiction' bit of history. No doubt details have been 'movied' but this is one astonishing true life adventure story. Antonio Banderas is very good. Too 'pretty boy', but still good. Eion Bailey plays the young director in charge of the production. Alan Arkin is quietly wonderful as always. Jim Broadbent is good as the studio head. The movie is fun; big, elaborate, ambitious, filled with convincing detail and includes several well staged battle sequences sufficiently brutal and bloody. Excellent and appropriate score.

This HBO cable film skirts fact and fiction; nonetheless, very interesting. Legendary Mexican revolutionary, Pancho Villa, convinces famed movie director D.W. Griffith to enter a money making project. General Villa (Antonio Banderas) finds himself strapped for money in his war with Mexico's dictator Victorio Huerta. American arms are hard to come by due to an embargo pushed by the wealthy William Randolph Hearst. Villa makes Griffith (Colm Feore) an unheard of offer of unrestricted access to film actual combat between his forces and the Mexican Federales. Pancho seems to be an astute businessman, as he is a social freedom fighter. All he wants is 25 grand and about 20 percent of profits from the documentary.Special effects appear too good for a TV movie and Banderas IS Pancho Villa. Mr. Banderas is a natural and fully in his element. Also in the cast: Kyle Chandler, Damian Alcazar, Eion Bailey, Michael McKean, Matt Day, Alexa Davalos, Cosme Alberto, Saul Rubinek and Alan Arkin.

Tough subject matter and too complex for your average Hollywood screenwriter. Big problem here is story focused on a film crew's 2 week experience with Pancho and not on say just Pancho or just the Revolution. This is a huge story with many players and much deception. and intrigue. You could have a series or a much more in depth movie to make it more interesting. Banderas performance was likable but stereotypical and demeaning in the traditional Hollywood attitude towards Mexicans of earlier times. Poncho in the movie was mostly poorly dressed, unshaven and generally dirty and greasy looking and talked like a gravelly uneducated person. This was not necessary and took away from the movie as you lost sympathy for the main character.

This film tracks very closely the content of the 1913 nitrate film of Dr. Charles A. Pryor "Associated Press Reporter and President, El Paso Feature Film Co." held by the Library of Congress as the AFI/Seffens Collection.The Banderas film credits Mary Pickford's long-time cameraman George Rosher as the cinematographer covering Villa's battles, although it appears there were a large number of foreign cameramen filming both Villa's rebel army and the Federal defenders, including Charles Pryor, with Rosher one of those confirming Pryor's cinematic efforts in the form of a notarization dated "Presidio, Texas, Jan 12, 1914."Pryor's effort "The Great Mexican War," was shown in theaters in San Francisco and Sacramento in April 1914 and later in Europe. I have jpgs of the original lobby posters if anyone is interested.