Filming "One Man's Hero"

DURANGO, Mexico (CNN) -- In the mid-1840s, relations between the United States and Mexico were tense as the two nations prepared to battle over territory that eventually would become Texas and California -- two of the largest U.S. states.

So in 1846, when a group of Irish-American soldiers from the U.S. Army attended Mass with Mexicans, they were arrested and jailed by their fellow soldiers.

As the story goes, Irish-American John Riley, an Army officer, freed his men and escaped with them to the mountains of a Mexican desert.

To the U.S. government, the men were deserters and traitors. To the Mexicans, they would become heroes.

Riley and his men were captured by Mexican rebels, and Riley was wounded, then nursed back to health. Over time, the Irish-Americans befriended their captors and agreed to fight on Mexico's side during the 1846-47 Mexican-American War.

Riley's story is now being filmed as the romantic adventure "One Man's Hero" by Hollywood producer and director Lance Hool. The $20 million epic, starring Tom Berenger of "Platoon," is to be released in 1998 by MGM studios and the independent distributor Kushner-Locke Co.

The movie is being shot on location in Mexico.

Hool, who produced "McHale's Navy," which was released earlier this year, says the Irish fighters were sympathetic to Mexico's plight.

"They felt that Mexico was being very similar to their own cause in Ireland in which you had a large, powerful Protestant nation pretty much overwhelming a poor Catholic one, and they stood up for that," he told CNN.

The Irish-Americans formed an elite unit named after Ireland's patron saint: the San Patricio, or St. Patrick's, battalion.

The San Patricios fought with valor in several major battles of the war, and often preferred to fight to the death rather than surrender.

Director Lance Hool

Hool's film will show that many of the soldiers died in the climactic Battle of Monterey, but some managed to escape. Most of them, however, were captured by the U.S. Army and put in chains.

Riley was beaten, branded and forced to watch 46 of his men hanged by the U.S. soldiers. He was freed after the war and reunited with the nurse who healed him.

Correspondent Chris Kline contributed to this report.