MOVIE REVIEWS: FOR GREATER GLORY

For Greater Glory, which tells the story of the Christero War, the Mexican government’s purported effort to stamp out the Catholic Church in 1926, has been nearly stamped out by the critics. Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle dismisses it as “a scattered mess.” To Robert Abele in the Los Angeles Times, it’s “a stodgy, overblown and repetitive slog.” To Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe, it’s “a total embarrassment.” A.O. Scott’s review in the New York Times is not so disparaging, but even he concludes, “The jamming together of so much history and melodrama makes for a handsome movie that is only rarely gripping.” But Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times gives it a mostly positive review, writing that it “is the kind of long, expensive epic not much made any more. It bears the hallmarks of being a labor of love. I suspect it’s too long for some audiences. … But in its use of locations and sets, it’s an impressive achievement by director Dean Wright.”