The heart is chopped out of this latest version of Texas' epic battle.
By STEVE PERSALL
Published April 8, 2004
[Photo: Touchstone Pictures]
Patrick Wilson, left, plays Lt. Col. William Travis, Billy Bob Thornton is Davy Crockett and Jason Patric, right, portrays James Bowie at The Alamo.
Remember the Alamo? Texans never give anyone a chance to forget, they're so enamored with the sacrifice of a couple hundred defenders against a massive Mexican army in 1836.
Director John Lee Hancock is from Texas and it shows in The Alamo, the third movie version of the battle for Texas independence. Hancock's film is packed with details only a son of the Lone Star State would know or consider important. It also operates with the arrogance that everyone should already understand what the fuss was about.
That may be a result of Touchstone Pictures' decision to trim an hour from Hancock's original version. Somewhere on the cutting room floor may be a clearer definition of political and social events that made important a worn Spanish mission in the middle of nowhere. The final cut of The Alamo is all about vividly re-created warfare and just enough personal information to help identify the bodies.
Something was lost with those editing choices. That something, for the most part, is personality. The defense is that Hancock is showing ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances that thrust heroism upon them. The reality is that even characters who should be larger than life are practically the same size, emotionally speaking, as the background extras.
Only Billy Bob Thornton is given screenplay material approaching the legendary status of his role, outdoorsman Davy Crockett, who came from Tennessee to Texas because a good scrap was brewing. John Wayne played Crockett in his 1960 film The Alamo, but that version merely wrapped the Duke's swagger in a coonskin cap.
This film's Crockett is a bantam rooster trapped by celebrity. Actors play him on stage, and women (and some men, even enemies) fawn over his reputation. Thornton's Crockett is amused by the attention and can't avoid basking in it on occasion. Yet, in private moments, he brushes off acclaim and worries what kind of jam it's leading him into.
That doubt causes Crockett to compensate with the film's most appealing defiance to Mexican pressure: playing his fiddle in harmony with an army band's overture to cannon fire, and especially a climactic face-off with Mexican dictator Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna that, if true, is a terrific brush-off of oppression. "Is that Santa Anna?" Crockett asks while completely at the general's mercy. "I thought he'd be taller."
The other principals defending the Alamo aren't as finely etched. As Lt. Col. William Travis, St. Petersburg native Patrick Wilson simply doesn't appear battleworthy. His dandy mannerisms don't have the get-under-your-skin factor to make his eventual bravery effective, as Lawrence Harvey managed to do with the role in Wayne's film.
Even Travis' shining moment of rallying respect, defusing a cannonball to recycle back to the Mexicans, falls flat without rousing music or a convincing hero to match the awed looks he receives. Wilson isn't bad, but like so many others in The Alamo, he's too ordinary, not a satisfying martyr. Sometimes, as the late, great director John Ford declared, you have to print the legend.
Historical accuracy causes rugged Col. Jim Bowie (Jason Patric) to spend the crucial battle flat on his back, dying of consumption. Before that, Bowie appears to want to be anywhere but here. But that is an impressive knife he brandishes, though he never does anything with it.
The film's worst performance belongs to Dennis Quaid as Gen. Sam Houston, the loudest advocate for Texas independence. Quaid must have studied those stern portraits in Lone Star State museums, basing his performance entirely upon frowns, a furrowed brow and mutton-chop sideburns. As he showed inFar from Heaven, Quaid can't handle playing intoxication, turning Houston's slurred bravado into near farce.
Hancock also makes the Pearl Harbor mistake of adding a vengeful anti-climax, since the showcased battle is a losing effort. Certainly Houston's defeat of Santa Anna at San Jacinto is more closely connected to the Alamo than Jimmy Dolittle's air raid against Tokyo was to the Pearl Harbor attack. Otherwise we wouldn't hear the slogan. It's still stretching for a feel-good ending after the wrong side (for U.S. tastes) won.
The Alamo will satisfy viewers according to their personal connections to the drama. Texans, warfare buffs and, locally speaking, Wilson's family and friends, will overestimate it. People tired of Lone Star State chest-swelling will dismiss it entirely. Those of us somewhere in the middle can only echo Crockett's assessment of Santa Anna: Fairly impressive, but I thought it would be taller.
The Alamo
Grade: B-
Director: John Lee Hancock
Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Dennis Quaid, Jason Patric, Patrick Wilson, Emilio Echevarria, Jordi Molla
Screenplay: Leslie Bohem, Stephen Gaghan, John Lee Hancock
