The Alamo
Hearing that “The Alamo” was a bad movie, it now makes sense to me because this is a great one. Every film named “The Alamo,” according to the conventional wisdom in Hollywood, must be simpleminded and stirring even though we know all the defenders got killed. (If we don’t know it already, they let us in on the secret in the first scene.) This is a movie about men waiting for two weeks for what they are certain will be their deaths, yes, but more than that it’s about what those pop-culture brand names like Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie look like when you give them human shape.
The Alamo story presents a difficult arc for any filmmaker: days and nights of waiting followed by hours of massacre. The eventual defeat of Santa Anna by Sam Houston brings an upbeat coda but little consolation to the dead defenders. This movie confronts the long wait and deadly outcome head-on by focusing on the characters of the leaders what they’re made of and how they face up to such a hopeless situation.
Davy Crockett, famous for wearing a coonskin cap, emerges as perhaps the most three-dimensional hero of “The Alamo” here in one of Billy Bob Thornton’s finest performances. We first encounter him sitting in a theater box watching a play inspired by his exploits. We hear about his legend; even Santa Anna’s men whisper that he can leap rivers in a single bound and wrestle grizzly bears to death. And then we see Crockett smile sadly as he patiently explains that no, he never did any of those things none but his reputation lives apart from his reality.
Crockett has two scenes that are flat out great; both involve acts of remembering where Thornton invests them with such quiet dignity I had tears streaming down my cheeks. One is his recollection of seeing U.S. soldiers massacre Indians after first having promised them peace. The other comes when the Mexicans, who have brought along a band, have their players put on a show.
Crockett knows just what the band needs; he climbs one of the battlements, takes out his fiddle, and serenades both sides. It is one of those moments, like the Christmas Eve truce in World War I, when fighting men on both sides are reminded of the innocence they’ve lost. Crockett also has a line that somehow reminded me of “Jaws”: “We’re going to need more men.”
The leadership of The Alamo is contested between Col. James Bowie (Jason Patric) and Lt. Col. William Barrett Travis (Patrick Wilson). It involves hands being raised, wills being tested, a truce being declared then broken and finally ignored as inevitable disintegration overtakes Bowie, who is dying of tuberculosis and other diseases.
Travis is an earnest patriot who would rather have moments of glory than a lifetime of drudgery; he strikes the men as over the top. But he’s true to his principles, and at one point although it has been suggested that it’s time for him to speak to his men he delivers a speech filled with fire and resolve that reminded me of Henry V on the night before Agincourt
Bowie realizes he’s going to die, and it’s unbearable watching him try to button his vest and get up from his deathbed to go fight. Two revolvers are put in each of his hands, and when the Mexicans enter the room, he kills two of them before they take away what little life they have left of him. Both Travis and Bowie could’ve been caricatures; Wilson and Patric find their humanity.
The director and co-writer, John Lee Hancock, spends over an hour on scenes leading up to the final battle while the Alamo defenders make plans and wait for reinforcements that never come. As Santa Anna’s troops surround them, Gen. Santa Anna (Emilio Echevarria) struts and poses in front of his officers, who are horrified by his ignorance but cowed by his temper.
Ordering the final charge, he’s told a 12-pound cannon will arrive tomorrow that would breach the Alamo’s walls without sacrifice of countless Mexican lives, but he disdains to wait, and dismisses the lives with a wave of his hand. (His own life was much more precious to him; he traded it for Texas.)
There are two scenes involving surrender that make an ironic contrast. Surrounded by dead bodies, himself gravely wounded, Crockett is offered surrender terms by Santa Anna and replies by defiantly offering to accept Santa Anna’s surrender. This is matched by the scene at the end where Houston (Dennis Quaid) has Santa Anna on his knees, and the general will agree to anything.
Much of it takes place at night under campfires or candlelight; Dean Semler’s magnificent cinematography finds color and texture even in shadows that seem illuminated only by Fitzgerald’s darkest hour between midnight at dawn. Strangely enough when Santa Anna’s troops march up within 100 yards of The Alamo there appear hardly any watchmen when they attack, it’s a surprise.
The battle scenes are brutal and unforgiving; we realize the first Mexicans up the scaling ladders must have known they would certainly die, and yet they climbed them anyway. This intimate hand to hand is balanced by awesome long shots, combining the largest sets ever build by modern Hollywood with some special effects shots that are generally convincing.
But although The Alamo has taken its place as a sacred chapter in American history, the movie deals most powerfully with one fact: Mexico owned Texas, and ambitious Americans and Texans (or “Texians“) wanted it. Many of the fighters had been promised 760 acres of land as a bonus for enlisting. For Bowie, Crockett and Travis, the challenge was to rehabilitate reputations that had gone astray to redeem themselves.
For Sam Houston, who never sent reinforcements, it was an opportunity to apply Wellington’s strategy in leading Napoleon on a chase until Napoleon’s army was splintered and weakened. You don’t send your army to The Alamo if you’re Sam Houston; that takes foolishness, bravery and a certain poetry of the soul.
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