Cast: Dennis Quaid, Billy Bob Thornton, Jason Patric, Patrick Wilson, Emilio Echevarrķa, Jordi Mollą
Director: John Lee Hancock
Producers: Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Mark Johnson
Screenplay: Leslie Bohem and Stephen Gaghan and John Lee Hancock
Cinematography: Dean Semler
Music: Carter Burwell
U.S. Distributor: Touchstone Pictures
The good news first: The Alamo is probably the most historically accurate depiction yet to reach the screen of the famous siege. The bad news is that "historically accurate" does not necessarily translate into "dramatically successful." Emotionally inert and poorly paced, The Alamo transforms one of Texas' best-known events into an uninvolving bore. And, to add a dose of irony to the proceedings, the most compelling elements of the film are those that transpire away from the Alamo.
The film opens in February 1836, with the Texas Revolution against Mexico well underway. Following about 30 minutes of establishing material introducing the main characters - General Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid), American legend Davy Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton), knife-happy James Bowie (Jason Patric), and buttoned-down regular army colonel William Barrett Travis (Patrick Wilson) - the siege of the Alamo by the troops of Santa Anna (Emilio Echevarrķa) begins. 75 minutes later, it's over, and nearly everyone within is dead. Santa Anna's army then pursues Houston across Texas. The film concludes with the decisive battle at San Jacinto and the capture of Santa Anna.
The portion of the film that transpires within the Alamo is easily the least interesting element of the movie - at least until Santa Anna's army makes its final push against the Texian defenders. There's a lot of needless filler and dramatically ineffective material, as director John Lee Hancock tries futilely to give personality to names that history reveres as heroes. Yet, with the exception of Davy Crockett, who is presented as a fatalistic man who ruefully acknowledges that he doesn't resemble the myth, attempts to humanize the legends fail. Bowie, Seguin (Jordi Mollą), Travis, and others do not attain multi-dimensionality. When Santa Anna's forces overwhelm the defenders, it seems more like a triumph of filmmaking spectacle than a human tragedy. The siege of Helms Deep in The Two Towers proved that this kind of battle can be stirring and powerful. The Alamo doesn't come close.
Aside from Crockett, who is perfectly played by Billy Bob Thornton, the only character to achieve a partial escape from the written page is Houston. Dennis Quaid's performance is straightforward and stoic, but it works under the circumstances, although his attempt to give a "rousing" speech at San Jacinto will not be confused with Henry V's St. Crispin's Day address ("He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, will stand a tip-toe when the day is named"). The post-Alamo sequences, which focus on Houston, seem truncated (apparently, nearly an hour of material was trimmed to about 20 minutes), but move quickly and provide a sense of closure to the story. (Ending with the fall of the Alamo would not have been emotionally satisfying.) Nevertheless, the strength of the Houston sequences illustrates the weakness of the bulk of the narrative. One could argue that the center of the movie should have been re-calibrated towards Houston, not the Alamo.
Movies like Glory and Gettysburg prove that it is possible to successfully combine human drama with 19th century battles, but this is a technique that escaped the makers of The Alamo. Admittedly, it's hard to imagine what Hancock's original version was, since negative test screenings resulted in nearly a third of the footage being excised (this is the reason why the Christmas 2003 release date was pushed back to Easter 2004). What's left is an uneven production that has occasional moments of high energy (the final attack on the Alamo representing the film's most spectacular 10 minutes), but is mostly mired in banal dialogue, failed character interaction, and familiar melodrama (the friction between the untried Travis and the grizzled Bowie which is eventually defused when Travis proves himself). The events that occurred at the Alamo will be remembered long after this movie is forgotten.
© 2004 James Berardinelli