One Man's Hero is a 1999 historical war drama film directed by Lance Hool and starring Tom Berenger, Joaquim de Almeida and Daniela Romo. The film has the distinction of being the last film released by Orion Pictures' arthouse division Orion Classics, as well as being the last Orion Pictures film, until 2013's Grace Unplugged, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer revived the Orion Pictures brand. The film is a dramatization of the true story of John Riley and the Saint Patrick's Battalion, a group of Irish Catholic immigrants who desert the mostly Protestant U.S. Army to join the mostly Catholic Mexican side during the Mexican–American War of 1846 to 1848. Plot The story centers around Sgt. John Riley and 16 men of his U.S. Army battalion who (against military law) are whipped for "desertion" only because they had traveled—without an explicit permission—to the Mexican side of the border to fulfill their religious obligation to attend Mass, and because they are thought to be "Papists" whose loyalty is ipso facto suspect in the eyes of their Protestant commanders. Sgt. Riley, with regard for the safety and well-being of his men, releases them at gun-point from the lash. He escorts them across the border to Mexico to hopefully find at Vera Cruz a ship back to Ireland, only to be violently captured by the revolutionary Juan Cortina as enemies of Mexico. Riley, wounded in his thigh, is nursed by Cortina's woman Marta. As Cortina considers what to eventually do with Riley and his men, news arrives that the U.S. and Mexico are now at war. Because of this, after a visit from the representative of the Mexican government the Irish deserters are presented with the choice of joining and fighting on the side of the Mexican Army, thus forming their own battalion under command by Riley. Riley is made a captain, in charge of all the Irish-immigrant U.S. soldiers who have come over to the Mexican side in increasingly large numbers, (as General Zachary Taylor puts it, "because of sex, saints and sadism"). For encouragement they are given their own green flag as the Saint Patrick's Battalion. Several key battle engagements are highlighted, with dates, and a cease-fire is reached. Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate is threatening to impeach President Polk as opinion turns against U.S. aggression and the invasion of the Republic of Mexico. The cease-fire is soon violated and hostilities resume. Gen. Zachary Taylor,