The movie was iterrupted with the loss of Russel Crowe and The Director. It shows. It's always a pleasure to watch Billy Bob.

Rating: 6/10 (8 October 2004)

I understand that Russel Crowe was originally signed to do this picture. When it started going over budget, the Director was fired. A new director was hired and attempted to salvage the remainder of the movie with severe budget restraints. The outcome was Dennis Quaid doing a very sour performance of Sam Houston and a movie that was noticeably lacking in continuity and poor performances. The cast was lacking in name recognition.
There was also much evidence of poor editing and rewrites.
Historical accuracy also suffered. Too bad all the advance publicity dollars couldn't have been spent on making the movie better. Even Billy Bob Thornton couldn't save it.