Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Bardlerx Strictly average movie

2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

stantims2 It's disappointing that a cast this extensive and strong couldn't be better used. I think I'd hold Director Steve Miner most accountable for this flop. He has done such a good job in the horror genre, but I think he tried to play way out of his league on this one.

James Hitchcock In 1875, ten years after the end of the Civil War, Texas, especially the area along the Mexican border, is a wild, lawless place where ranchers and homesteaders are frequently threatened by bandits. The State Governor therefore decides to re-create the Texas Rangers, who had been disbanded after the Civil War, to uphold the law. The film follows the exploits of a company of Rangers led by Leander McNelly. The villain of the story is John King Fisher, the leader of a gang of outlaws who specialise in stealing cattle and then fleeing into Mexico, where the stolen cattle are sold to the Mexican army. The gang are ruthless killers, who have no compunction about murdering unarmed civilians in cold blood. It came as no surprise to discover that the film is loosely based on fact and that McNelly and King Fisher were real historical figures; "Leander McNelly" did not sound like the sort of name any scriptwriter would invent for a fictitious character. The film allegedly takes some liberties with the historical record, but these are unlikely to upset anyone other than experts on Texan history.Although the Texas Rangers are, strictly speaking, a law enforcement agency rather than a military unit, the film bears more resemblance to a war movie than to a cop film. The plot is that old staple of war movies, the one about the tough, experienced commander who takes a group of raw recruits (most of them are young men with little or no experience of guns or policing crime) and turns them into a crack fighting unit. In their initial battle with the bandits, the Rangers fall into a trap, and many of the young and ill-trained men are killed. Nevertheless they regroup, attract new recruits and face off against Fisher and his men in a final showdown.The film is directed by Steve Miner, previously known to me only as the man who made "Lake Placid", a dreadful horror-comedy unlikely to appeal to anyone other than those who feel that there is something inherently hilarious about someone getting their head bitten off by a gigantic crocodile. Fortunately, Miner makes no attempt to inject comedy elements into "Texas Rangers", and it is a better film than "Lake Placid", although that is not really saying much.The past few years have seen something of a revival of the Western genre. Many recent Westerns ("Dances with Wolves", "Unforgiven", "Wyatt Earp", "3.10 to Yuma") have been grand films made on an epic scale, but "Texas Rangers" is a much more modest, small-scale effort, more reminiscent of the old Western B-movies. Its total running time is very short for a twenty-first century film- the version I saw on British television recently only ran to eighty minutes. It is essentially a good-guys-versus-bad-guys Western of the old school with plenty of action and gunplay but without any deep significance. There are occasional attempts to inject a note of moral ambiguity- McNelly can be uncompromising in his methods- but there is little doubt that he and his men wear the metaphorical white hats and the Fisher gang the black ones. This is the sort of thing that Hollywood used to churn out by the dozen in the forties and fifties. 5/10

tracy-fbeye This movie was excellent! I am a teenager who didn't really think she would be interested in a western - I was wrong! This movie may not have had a huge plot or a great bunch of typical movie experiences, such as romance, sex, swearing, etc. but it had a perfect amount of western-style storyline to make it fascinating! The story is jam-packed with emotion, excitement, tension, even humor. The roles, in my opinion, were perfectly cast and even if the story is kinda predictable, it's not at all boring.If you want to see it, don't hesitate! It is completely worth the money spent and the time it takes. In fact, I've watched it over 10 times and have bought it, taken the audio and put it on my MP3 player to listen to, and have the soundtrack. It's wonderful! 100% recommended!

IMDbDon Who do you blame for a movie like this? When you watch a movie you can easily blame an actor for not putting in a good performance, a writer for a flawed script, or a director for not getting the right job out of an actor, or a casting director for a miss-cast. In this movie you can blame all of them, but, the bulk of the blame goes to one certain group: the producers.Alan Greisman and Frank Price must step up and take most of the blame for what is wrong with this film. This was a get-rich quick scheme that got what it deserved. When you set out to make a movie only for the money, and not for the movie, and there is no heart in it from the producers, this is what happens. There must be an undying passion from a film maker for it to show up in the final product on the screen. Here it just didn't happen. No heart in no heart out.Money talks and bullshit walks, and if you look at the following numbers, you can figure out which one this film is: Production Budget: $38,000,000 Total US Gross: $623,374