Not the 'Alamo' you remember

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By Hap Erstein
The Palm Beach Post

Posted: April 9, 2004

With no survivors from the 1836 siege of the mission structure known as the Alamo, the history of what happened there has long since given way to legend and aggrandizing exaggeration.

Cue Hollywood, which knows a good story when it hears it, even if it seldom lets the facts get in the way. The movies have often depicted the conflict between a couple of hundred Texans yearning for independence and an army of some 2,500 Mexican soldiers in white hat-black hat terms.

The most recent example was in 1960, in one of the few cinematic skirmishes that John Wayne did not win.

Now comes yet another version, director/co-writer John Lee Hancock's ("The Rookie") take on "The Alamo," a more muted, character-driven account, which at least gives the impression of inching closer to authenticity.

Students of studio economics will recall that this is not the movie originally on the drawing boards, the one slated to be directed by Ron Howard and starring Russell Crowe as Sam Houston. That was derailed when its budget spiraled beyond the limits of Disney accountants. What remains is a recast, scaled-down, but still reasonably epic film.

True, it was supposed to be out late last year, and rumors of frantic re-editing indicated an Alamo-sized disaster in the making. Instead, it turns out to be an involving, albeit overlong, account of the primal event in Texas history. If it is less bombastic than many viewers expect, it is still effective enough to hold off the next Alamo remake for at least another 40 years.

Following a post-siege camera pan of the fallen soldiers, the film flashes back a year to pick up the principal players making their way to their destiny at the Alamo.

Houston (an earnest Dennis Quaid) is busy lobbying Congress for assistance in the fight of so-called "Texians" for independence from Mexico, but his eloquence fails to gain support. In fact, he fails to make it to the Alamo, seeing the futility of a stand-off there and ordering his troops to abandon the mission.

Command then falls to Lt. Col. William B. Travis (a callow, blond Patrick Wilson), who grows in the job, keeping spirits high with impassioned speeches to the troops while his letters requesting additional men go unanswered.

By the time we see Jim Bowie (fevered Jason Patric) of the sharp-bladed signature knife, he is already in slipping health and will spend most of his "Alamo " time abed.

The most colorful character and best performance comes from Billy Bob Thornton's David — the former congressman's preferred first name — Crockett. A national celebrity for his frontier exploits, his fame increased with a stage impersonator who recounts his heroic deeds, yet he is a soft-spoken egotist. And when the Mexican troops rattle the Texians with their drum tattoos, Crockett climbs to the ramparts and returns the musical volley with a violin solo.

You may be checking your watch by then, but yes, the movie does eventually get to the siege and it is aptly bloody and viscerally photographed.

There was, of course, no suspense about the outcome, not unlike the film "Titanic." As with that Oscar winner, Hancock and his screenwriter collaborators — Leslie Bohem and Stephen Gaghan — have figured out a way to end the story of this tragic rout of would-be American forces on an upbeat note. And history even backs them up.