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This rousing retelling of the big battle at a tiny church should defeat doubters

By Chris Garcia
American-Statesman Film Critic

Posted: April 9, 2004

"The Alamo" opens with a dog licking a dead soldier's face in a haze of lingering cannon smoke. The camera glides past more lifeless fighters strewn this way and that, and the solemn, measured pace of the lens tells us we are looking at a hallowed swath of tragic nobility. More like martyrs than combatants do the men appear in this moviescape, arranged as meticulously as a bouquet of forget-me-nots.

This is history canoodling with Hollywood. "The Alamo" is tidy, doused in honeyed light, and looks pretty. It's dimpled with Hollywood moments: There are wry quips and a farewell exchange between a dying man and his pal. Jim Bowie wonders what happened to Davy Crockett's famous coonskin cap: "Crawl away?" he jokes. And somehow, amidst the ear-rending commotion of battle — lunging bodies, trampling horses, crackling musket fire — the dog lives.

A jangly and compelling mix of legend, hype and historical record, "The Alamo" tries to de-mythify the myth with less revisionism than mild irreverence. Yet some corny concessions are excusable because so much effort is made to cut the battle's exalted triumvirate — Crockett, Bowie and William Travis — down to fallible human stature. Crockett's legend may precede him — even Mexican soldiers whisper like little boys about his storied exploits — but he's the first to downplay that image, and Billy Bob Thornton, whose Crockett is an admirably conflicted hero, has a great way with a self-effacing smile.

"The Alamo" is surprisingly good. Director John Lee Hancock has shaped his monster project into tough, engaging pop history. If you suspect I'm being easy on this locally made, sometimes troubled production about Texas' own Pearl Harbor — a historical marker, both symbol and slogan — you're wrong. Neither Texan nor Mexican, I've never been intrigued by the Alamo or its bloated lore. But the movie, which I vaguely dreaded, bound me up in a piquant slice of the American past.

Alamo buffs may demur. (Please, hold your mail about the movie's inaccuracies. I don't care.) Hancock and co-writers Leslie Bohem ("Dante's Peak") and Stephen Gaghan ("Traffic") are the first to admit their "Alamo" is unencumbered by some of the pricklier edges of historical certitude. It's in the name of entertainment, this Hollywood varnish, which sometimes means expedient actions and dialogue, such as this from Dennis Quaid's forever scowling Sam Houston: "What is it about that place . . . the Alamo? Ain't nothin' but a church!"

But the movie also honors hard realities. Bowie, for instance, doesn't do much during the Mexican siege of the crumbling mission compound in San Antonio de Bexar (luxuriantly recreated in Dripping Springs by set designer Michael Corenblith). Stricken with typhoid pneumonia, he spends the battle in bed. When he's not pulling out his famous knife, which is the size of a pirate sword, the macho, hard-drinking Bowie is coughing blood into a kerchief. Jason Patric plays Bowie the only way Jason Patric can: brooding, slit-eyed, mean, with hacking nods to Victor Mature's consumptive Doc Holliday in John Ford's "My Darling Clementine." Still, even under the covers, he goes out in a blaze of pistol fire.

Hancock has his hands full, zigzagging between Crockett, Bowie and Travis at the Alamo and Quaid's frustrated Houston, who, far from the action, tries in vain to assemble enough troops to fend off Gen. Santa Anna's army. All this hopscotching makes for sketchy characterizations.

The performances run from broad to pensive, but the revelation is newbie Patrick Wilson as Travis. Most recently seen as Joe Pitt in the HBO production of "Angels in America," Wilson has the hardest job because Travis is the only character who evolves through the story. His tense relations with the surly Bowie, who dismisses Travis' leadership, pressure Travis to prove himself, and Wilson's boyish features seem to age as he locates martial grit.

Where "The Alamo" fumbles is in its weak portrayal of the Mexicans, who are about half as human as the Alamo defenders. Santa Anna (Emilio Echevarría of "Amores Perros") can't get past a graven scowl and starched regal bluster ("Quite the peacock," says Crockett), while the Mexican army is shorthanded as grunting, bayonet-jabbing ogres.

Hancock sustains a good amount of tension and dramatic drive in a story that's 80 percent buildup. As the Mexican army creeps that much closer to the doomed, ragtag warriors behind the adobe walls, you sense the sweat. The siege itself is brisk and brutal. In case you haven't heard, we lose.

That's a mighty downbeat ending in these times of enforced patriotism. So Hancock doesn't stop there, ending the movie after the decisive Texian victory at San Jacinto, which works fine, though some have griped it's a feel-good sop.

The real sop happens after the smoke has cleared at the Alamo, when a shackled Crockett kneels before Santa Anna and fires off some wisecracks. His funny defiance is well-intentioned Hollywood fabrication that reminds you how hard it is to turn history into a mass-ready product. Somehow, "The Alamo" pulls it off.

cgarcia@statesman.com; 445-3649