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
Harveycritic@cs.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 37531 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1270062 X-RT-TitleID: 1131222 X-RT-SourceID: 570 X-RT-AuthorID: 1123 X-RT-RatingText: C
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