Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.5

Texas Rising Blu-ray Movie Review

Messing with Texas.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 31, 2015

Remember the Alamo? The perhaps sad fact is that many of us mostly remember The Alamo or even sidebar entertainments like Pee-wee's Big Adventure that featured the iconic Texan fortress, but the upshot is that many (myself included) have only a passing acquaintance with the actual history surrounding this era of Texan history, when the still nascent United States’ southern border was in more than a bit of flux and Texas itself was caught between varying interests and existed for a while in a kind of netherworld where it was neither “American” (meaning belonging to the United States) nor Mexican, nor indeed independent. This would seem to be more than fertile territory for a historical epic, one that hewed more closely to the facts (and just the facts) than John Wayne’s 1960 opus. Unfortunately History, a cable channel that seems to almost willfully defy the meaning of its moniker at times, has taken some substantial liberties with the story of the so-called Texian Army and the Texas Revolution in the wake of the devastating defeat at the Alamo in 1836. History is to be commended for having evidently spared little expense in bringing this saga to the small screen, and the miniseries is stuffed to the gills with some rather good performances from a hugely eclectic cast. Perhaps even more notably, the miniseries is directed by multiple Academy Award nominee Roland Joffé (The Killing Fields, The Mission), who invests the piece with the requisite sweep and visual acuity. However, even Joffé’s eye for panoramic vistas can’t help this miniseries overcome a perhaps disastrously overstuffed teleplay, one that employs a lot of talky bits to fill up its lengthy (some would probably argue overly lengthy) running time.

There is so much history at play in this story that Texas Rising often struggles to make clear exactly who all the people stuffed into the tale are, and how exactly they are linked to each other. There’s a certain reliance on “name familiarity” to help get the viewer through the “introductions”, though even here the miniseries stumbles. Sure, most people are going to be at least passingly familiar with legends like Sam Houston (Bill Paxton) and Mexico’s Santa Anna (Olivier Martinez), the two main combatants of the piece, but are many audience members going to know the often fascinating back stories of such really compelling people like Emily D. West (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) or even Deaf Smith (Jeffrey Dean Morgan)? The sometimes fussy teleplay at least attempts to give a bit of character information along the way, but too often folks are simply plopped down in various scenarios without enough context being offered for the layperson to fully understand the impact of individual scenes.

Since Texas Rising deals with a veritable “cast of thousands,” there’s perhaps a tendency for characters to be offered as types rather than full blooded individuals, something that’s probably most apparent with Santa Anna himself, a general who is more or less described as a genocidal maniac in some opening textual information and who is then portrayed as a merciless killer who simply marauds through the Texians, leaving little other than death in his wake. The fact that Santa Anna probably felt that his own territory had been invaded by interlopers is rarely if ever mentioned, something that divorces at least some of this convoluted story from its veritable roots. While there are not one but two Native American tribes wandering through this tale, Texas Rising commendably largely shies away from traditional "cowboys versus Indians" tropes but offers little nuance in the more general “good guys versus bad guys” set up, with the stalwart Texians wearing the figurative white hats (not so figurative in a couple of cases) and those nefarious Mexicans doing duty as the villains. A more well rounded teleplay would have at least sought to uncover the actual history at play here, instead of trying to craft a modern day western with clearly delineated lines of good versus evil.

While Texas Rising’s “meta” qualities are at least questionable, the miniseries does better in its smaller, more intimate, interchanges between various characters, even if the surrounding context isn’t always going to be clear for those not already well versed in the real life history. While the cast ranges from Kris Kristofferson somewhat dubiously cast as President Andrew Jackson to a rather bizarre turn by Ray Liotta as an unhinged guy with a surprise or two up his addled sleeve, the better moments come from typically unsung actors like Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who makes Deaf Smith instantly relatable and empathetic. There’s a historically questionable “Mata Hari” element added to Emily D. West’s storyline that Addai-Robinson has to struggle to overcome, something that isn’t helped by the sometimes unavoidable hyperbolisms of Martinez’s Santa Anna.

Joffé is no stranger to “alien” landscapes, as he proved so admirably with The Mission, and while Texas Rising tends to stumble from narrative hurdle to narrative hurdle, visually the miniseries is quite enticing. What’s at least a little remarkable here, though, is a reliance not on typical spectacle like huge battle scenes, but on wide open vistas where the human element seems almost hilariously miniscule at times. The choice not to exploit huge armed interchanges perhaps deprives the miniseries of some visceral impact— traditional structure aficionados may wish that the piece had started with the mammoth conflagration at The Alamo itself instead of its aftermath, to cite just one example. But here the filmmakers tip their hand that they’re after a more up close and personal take on the material. Unfortunately it’s hard to get up close and personal with such an overwrought assemblage of characters, keeping this miniseries in an appropriately middling midrange territory most of the time.

Texas Rising Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Texas Rising is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. Digitally shot with the Red Epic Dragon, the miniseries boasts impeccable depth of field in its many wide shots, though some clumsy CGI at times intrudes. A lot of the miniseries has been very interestingly color graded to a just slightly desaturated, beigish side of things. It's not quite to traditional sepia tone levels, but it comes close at times, giving the film the appearance of something like a Daguerreotype come to life. This tends to slightly mask detail at times, especially in dimmer lit environments where the brown-beige appliqué can add a bit of murk. This also means that even in a lot of brightly lit outdoor scenes, the palette doesn't really "pop" with any traditional vividness, and instead assumes an appropriately dusty, ragged looking appearance. Joffé and cinematographer Arthur Reinhart occasionally play with other elements like boosted contrast and brightness, not to mention occasionally skewed framings, and these moments can also minimally detract from detail and fine detail levels (see screenshot 19). There are a couple of odd moments where a peculiar crosshatching pattern shows up for just a moment or two. It doesn't look like a traditional compression issue and may stem from the source digital file. It's a momentary distraction at worst (some may not even notice).

Texas Rising Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Perhaps because of its avoidance of an overreliance on knock down, drag out battle scenes, Texas Rising's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix may strike some as a bit less bombastic than might have been expected, though to be fair the track offers exceptional surround activity when there is action like galloping horses or indeed gunfire erupting on screen. Some of the most consistent surround activity actually comes courtesy of the often beautiful score by Bruce Broughton and John Debney, a score which features some guitar solos by Jose Feliciano. Dialogue is well rendered and well prioritized. Fidelity is fine and dynamic range wide (if not huge) on this problem free track.

Texas Rising Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Capturing the Revolution: Filming Texas Rising (1080p; 14:34) is an okay EPK with some decent interviews and behind the scenes footage.


• Sam Houston: A Man of the Revolution (1080p; 13:58) is unfortunately not an actual biography per se but instead more EPK- esque fodder containing interviews and scenes from the miniseries. There are some passing tidbits about the actual real life person including things like archival photographs and some talking head commentary on Houston.


• General Santa Anna: Leading Mexico (1080p; 12:20) does at least get into a bit more of the historical nuance which prompted Santa Anna to battle the Texians.

Note: All of the supplements are found on the second disc of this two disc set. Disc One has been authored fairly clunkily with some extremely slowly loading previews which are cumbersome to either fast forward or chapter skip through. Disc One has a Special Features option on its Main Menu, but that offers only these same previews and a Bookmarks feature.

Texas Rising Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Texas Rising has a lot of elements that are interesting if ultimately not all that riveting, but it suffers from over length and a "cast of thousands" approach that simply tends to disperse attention and keep too many veritable balls in the air to ever achieve any sense of focus and, more importantly, connection. The miniseries is often quite striking from a visual standpoint, and many of the performances are first rate. But this miniseries would have benefited from a much narrower focus on just a few characters as well as some significant trimming of its running time. Fans of Joffé and/or the large cast may well want to check this out, and for those folks, technical merits are generally excellent.