The Alamo (2004)

Alamo, The

Matinee

As a Texas native, I went into this Hollywood biopic (or is it

historical drama?) with some trepidation. With a gal from Amarillo

on my left and a gal from Orange County on my right, I found the

experience extremely gratifying. As my wise Californian companion

noted, a film about the Alamo has the same challenges as another huge

epic story with an unhappy ending, Titanic - we all know the end, and

it ain't pretty. So how do you get the audience to care about people

who open the story with the Grim Reaper's hand on their shoulder?

As James Cameron wisely did with Titanic, director John Lee Hooker

did by giving us tight focus on a small subsection of the less than

two hundred people holed up in the embattled mission. He humanized

these people, rather than painting them as the heroes and martyrs and

victims they will become, even making them unlikeable at times, and

we cared more when they ultimately fell. I know I felt the stirrings

of Texas pride in my breast, but even the Californian cared and

misted up right along with me.

Any film about the Alamo would be chock full of "have to haves," like

the image of Sam Houston under the tree at San Jacinto and David

Crockett atop the battlements. Even more salient is the image of

Santa Ana's army swarming on 188 Texians like fire ants at an ice

cream social. Dean Semler's photography is beautiful and moving

without devolving into excessive pathos. Semler's credits include

Dances With Wolves, Waterworld, Dead Calm, Young Guns, and Max Max

Beyond Thunderdome, for what that's worth, so lensers, take note.

Narratively, The Alamo can leave you wanting. If you didn't have the

seven pound Texas History textbook ripping your backpack open in

seventh grade, you might be at a loss as to who all these people are

and why they are important. Jim Bowie was not named for a full hour

and was only identifiable by his ludicrously deadly-looking knife.

Miss Amarillo and I shared knowing smiles and observed that William

B. Travis was just as cute as his statue. Miss Fullerton didn't know

who anyone was or what the meaningful exchanges were all about - but

all of us were pretty well moved right when we should have been.

Maybe it was Carter Burwell's lovely music.

The casting was simply lovely. Dennis Quaid's (Sam Houston) quiet

intensity, Billy Bob Thornton's (David Crockett) haunted cockiness,

and Emilio Echevarría's leering arrogance as Santa Ana were the

standout performances for me. Jason Patric's Bowie and Patrick

Wilson's Travis and Jordi Molla as Juan Seguin also did their

real-life counterparts proud. Those most interesting moments were

between Bowie and Crockett, two men who had been painted larger than

life, but indeed were men whose vulnerability shone through when they

spoke together.

I found the film as a whole satisfying and surprisingly tense as a

spectacle; I was also pleased that it was not as brutal as war movies

seem to feel they need to be these days.  For a war movie 

specifically commemorating a famous massacre, the gratuitous

squirting and detailed violence was kept down. If I were a Texas

History teacher, however, I would be disgruntled with how little we

find out about these Texas heroes even as we see their last few hours

on earth trickle away.

-- 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

These reviews (c) 2004 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to

forward but credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks. You can

check out previous reviews at:

http://www.cinerina.com and http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com - the

Online Film Critics Society

http://www.hsbr.net/reviews/karina/listing.hsbr - Hollywood Stock

Exchange Brokerage Resource

==========
X-RAMR-ID: 37560
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1271433
X-RT-TitleID: 1131222
X-RT-SourceID: 755
X-RT-AuthorID: 3661
X-RT-RatingText: 4/5