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THE ALAMO
by Peter Sobczynski

April 9, 2004

(out of 4 stars)

FILM CREDITS: Written by Leslie Bohem and Stephen Gaghan and John Lee Hancock. Directed by John Lee Hancock. Starring Dennis Quaid, Billy Bob Thornton, Jason Patric, Patrick Wilson and Emilio Echevarria.

As you may have heard, "The Alamo" began life as a film directed by Ron Howard and starring Russell Crowe until a dispute between Disney Studios and Howard over the direction of the film (Howard wanted his film to be a violent, R-rated epic) caused the latter to leave the project, with Crowe joining him. After massive rewrites, recasting and the hiring of John Lee Hancock, the new studio golden boy after the success of "The Rookie", to direct the project, "The Alamo" has finally made it to theaters. The irony is, after all the chaos and controversy surrounding the production, Hancock has essentially given viewers a typical Ron Howard film-bland, earnest and desperately trying to satisfy everyone while pleasing no one.

There are essentially two approaches that one could take to tell the story of the legendary 13-day standoff in 1836 between the Mexican army led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana (Emilio Echevarria) and the badly outnumbered soldiers of the Texas Republic, led by Davy Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton) and Jim Bowie (Jason Patric), holed up in the famously disputed San Antonio fortress. On the one hand, it could shamelessly play up the heroics at the expense of the historical record (in the way that John Wayne did in his 1960 version) and make it a one-sided rah-rah epic. On the other hand, it could scrupulously avoid such obvious crowd-pleasing moments and deflate the various myths and legends with a low-key historical approach.

Part of the problem with "The Alamo" is that it never seems entirely sure what kind of film it wants to be Either approach would be acceptable (although the notion of a politically correct version of "The Alamo" seems more than a bit daft) but Hancock and the various screenwriters try to use both of them. There are numerous moments, for example, when Crockett takes pains to dispel the various myths and stories that have built up around him-at one point even admitting that he only started wearing a coonskin hat because it was expected of him after actors playing him did so. On the other hand, we get a final confrontation between Crockett and Santa Ana after the slaughter that is so cheesy and over-the-top that it comes straight from a dime-store novel.

In portraying Santa Ana, though, there are no such conflicts; he is such a one-dimensional caricature that he comes off like a NAFTA version of Dr. Evil. (You keep waiting for him to raise his pinky to his mouth and offer to spare Crockett "for ONE MILLION PESOS!") We get to see him executing innocent people simply for the publicity value, submitting innocent virgins to any number of hideous depravations and wandering into a final trap at San Jacinto that even an child would have known to avoid. Perhaps there were other moments that portrayed him as something other than a cretinous dope but they must have been left on the cutting-room floor.

Actually, a lot was left on the cutting-room floor and it shows. Originally it was intended to be a three-hour epic until less-than-favorable test-audience responses caused Hancock to cut out almost an hour of footage (one of the reasons why the film, originally a high-profile Christmas release, was delayed until now). The problem is that you can’t just drop that much out of a film without causing a lot of narrative hiccups. Dennis Quaid gets top billing as Sam Houston but he is barely in the film-he pops up during the opening scenes and hardly appears again until the finale. A conflict between Jim Bowie and Col William Travis (Patrick Wilson) is introduced and almost immediately forgotten about. And there are too many transitions that are just plain sloppy. At one point, one of the Alamo leaders takes off and says "The Mexican army would have to travel 300 miles in the dead of winter to get here before I return." Guess what the very next shot is?

If there had been more scenes like that one, "The Alamo" might have worked as some kind of camp classic but it is too dull to even achieve that distinction-it comes off more like the longest, most expensive classroom film ever made. The John Wayne version might have been foolish and jingoistic but at least it was made with a passion that came across in every frame. This version, by comparison, seems made by people who know that the Alamo would be a good subject for a film but no real idea of why.

-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2004 Peter Sobczynski
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While the views expressed by Peter Sobczynski do not necessarily reflect the views of Criticdoctor.com, the Critic Doctor will occasionally examine Mr. Sobczynski's film reviews to bring forth an honest examination of those views expressed.