The Alamo Review
by Karina Montgomery (karina AT cinerina DOT com)April 12th, 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 Echevarrķa'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.
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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
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
