The Alamo Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)April 8th, 2004
THE ALAMO
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten
Grade: C
Touchstone Pictures/Imagine Entertainment
Directed by: John Lee Hancock
Written by: Leslie Bohem, Stephen Gagham
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Billy Bob Thornton, Jason Patric, Patrick Wilson, Emilio Echevarria, Jordi Molla, Laura Clifton, Leon Rippy, Kevin Page
Screened at: Loews E-Walk, NYC, 4/7/04
Each year that I taught American History in a Brooklyn high school, I'd play folk songs. This was back in the 1960s when both traditional banjo ballads and protest songs were de rigeuer among the kids, many of whom considered themselves proudly on the left of the political spectrum. Yet one of these songs went like this:
Santa Anna gained the day/Hooray/Santa Anna,
He gained the day/ All along the plains of
Mexico,oh
Odd melody, odd song to be playing to red-blooded kids in Brooklyn, one which glorifies the ruthless politician and general, elected president of Mexico in 1833, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna Perez de Lebron. That's quite a mouthful. And Santa Anna, as played in John Lee Hancock's "The Alamo," is quite a peacock, decked out in red and white as was the fashion in the Mexican Army just as it was the style of the British Redcoats during the American Revolution a few decades earlier. The cast of characters in the American Revolution, the Texan Revolution, probably the rebellion by Mexicans against Spain that gave their country independence--fought like real men, face to face, hand- to-hand, not like terrorists or like the black-pajama-clad Viet Cong troops that came to life at night and ambushed President Johnson's troops during the ill-fated Vietnam War. What John Lee Hancock tries to do with Leslie Bohem and Stephen Gagham's script here is to create a nationalistic ode to America, particularly to show his audience what is meant by the battle cry Remember the Alamo!
He succeeds, but only in spots. Where he goes wrong is presenting the leading characters on both sides as caricatures, each with a single trait that determines his actions and goals. He might have tried more to break through the deadly mold of history texts that drain the life out of each heroes and villains alike.
For example,consider the most important character in "The Alamo," played awfully well by Billy Bob Thornton whose long sideburns could have been the model for the tonsorial practices of men during the late sixties and early seventies. Thornton performs in the role of Davy Crockett, known by some today as King of the Wild Frontier, but who is given a pulse in the drama of the Battle of the Alamo. Crockett is shown to have the background of a Tennessee congressman, one known as a guy who'd wrestle alligators and who in one scene enjoys the performance of an actor on the stage who is cast with a cap made of from a heft slice of dead fox.
Crockett's principal opponent, General Santa Anna ((Emilio Echevarria), is determined to put down the rebellion of the Anglos who, perhaps looking at the situation like Monday morning quarterbacks, should never have been given permission to Anglos to come to Mexico's Northeast region to settle and develop the land. Decked out in costumer Daniel Orlandi's best finery, Echevarria plays his role in a somewhat effeminate manner, raising his voice to one of his own officers just once, relishing the thought of taking back the fort occupied by the settlers many of whom having become Mexican citizens and Roman Catholics at Santa Anna's orders.
With Jason Patric as the knife-wielding Jason Bowie, dying from a combination of TB, malaria and typhoid, Patrick Wilson as the effete lawyer and newly appointed Lt. Col. William Barrett Travis; Dennis Quaid as the hard-drinking General Sam Houston whose order to his fellows to quit to the Alamo goes unheeded by the 189 men stationed therein; the stage is set for two major battles. One skirmish results in the disastrous fall of the Alamo to Santa Anna, leaving all defenders dead while liquidating perhaps over 1,000 Mexicans; the other, following the idea in Michael Bay's "Pearl Harbor" to redeem that awful event with Doolittle's raid over Tokyo, shows the settlers under Sam Houston smashing the Mexican general's army while persuading Santa Anna to sign over what is now the state of Texas to the Americans.
We do see parallels to the present, most notably how the error by Santa Anna in dividing his army into three groups, thus weakening his forces where they're needed most and leading to his defeat finds a parallel, perhaps, in President Bush's command to remove large divisions from Afghanistan to pursue a similar government overthrow in Iraq.
History does occasionally come to life, but "The Alamo" is filled with long, aimless chatter, unconvincing, ham-fisted cries of patriotism--even a scene of an equestrian Dennis Quaid riding a white steed that twice lifts its front legs high into the air before taking off for the Battle of San Jacinto.
"The Alamo" has its moments: what war film does not? But the repetitive banter, particularly that of the dying Bowie who seems to breathe his last only to come to life, then fade again, then pop up once, could have been excised. More battles; less talk.
Rated PG-13. 137 minutes.(c) 2004 by Harvey Karten at
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