Hannibal Barca, a man who's tactics at Cannae are still studied at Military Academies (West Point) to this day, is in my opinion the greatest commander that ever lived. Of course we have Alexander, of whom Hannibal studied his military tactics. However Hannibal, at great odds against him, moved a force of 46,000 men with 37 war elephants across the Alps at the start of winter and made it to Italy. Of course he lost almost half his forces and only a few elephants survived. At any rate this achievement alone proved his leadership and willpower to overcome any obstacle between him and his most hated enemy...Rome. General Schwarzkopf made reference to Hannibal during Desert Storm and used some of his tactics during the invasion. As to the TV movie, the acting was pretty good, Siddig's performance as Hannibal was very good. An interesting point were the battles. They would show the aftermath of the battles, rather then a prolonged sequence of bloodletting. Historically accurate to a certain degree(according to the Romans as stated at the end of the movie), I enjoyed it. An interesting point is that Hannibal enabled Rome to become the conquering empire that we all know of. Scipio used Hannibal's tactics to defeat him at Zama and was then bestowed the title Scipio Africanus. In any event, let's hope Vin's portrayal of Hannibal is at least as good as this one.
