Movie Review: The Alamo

The Alamo

When merely seeing the trailer for a movie brings me to tears, you can bet I'll be in the audience for that movie on its opening weekend. Much like the movie Titanic, you know how The Alamo is going to end. But the entire story is one I didn't know well other than its virtually mythological status in Texas, so I was looking forward to learning a little something along the course of what I anticipated to be an emotionally charged movie. I did. And it was.

THE HISTORIC BACKGROUND: The Alamo is a story that almost didn't happen. The Spanish and Anglo settlers of the area later known as Texas had all agreed to become Mexican citizens and Catholics in exchange for land and the right to live there. But when General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna came to power in what was then a Constitutional government, he determined to be dictator. Residents of Texas decided to secede rather than concede to Santa Anna's plans.

The Alamo was a Catholic mission erected in 1718 in what would become San Antonio. It was never finished, but it somehow did manage to find itself at a crossroads of troop movement which in turn meant it changed hands with some regularity. The Texan forces at one point took San Antonio back from Mexican troops led by General Santa Anna's brother-in-law. It may have been that insult that prompted Santa Anna to march his troops more than 350 miles in the dead of winter to take the Alamo back.

General Sam Houston never considered that the Alamo might remain in Texan hands. He considered it to be indefensible. He ordered the makeshift fort to be abandoned. About 200 men refused to leave. Together, they held the Alamo against an overwhelming Mexican force for 13 days. That gave General Houston enough time to gather together sufficient men to eventually defeat Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto and so win Texan independence.

It should be noted that a few have complained the movie is historically inaccurate; everything I've been able to find says just the opposite, at least as far as the major plot points are concerned. (We obviously don't know what some people said or did in the thick of battle and just before they died, so it's fair to say some poetic license was granted there.)

THE MOVIE: The movie opens with a brief look at the carnage of the Alamo in the spring of 1836. Very quickly, it jumps backward a year to establish what led to the presence of some of the men at that heroic stand. General Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid) is in Washington, DC drumming up support for the settlement of Texas. While he's there, Houston runs into fellow Tennessean and legend-in-his-own-time David Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton) who is currently a Congressional Representative. He tells Crockett about Texas, but doesn't imagine that the Congressman will lose his next election and show up in Texas soon afterward. Also headed for the Alamo is Jim Bowie (Jason Patric). His wife, a beautiful Spanish woman, has died, but he conisders San Antonio as much of a home as he's got. Crockett and Bowie meet at the Alamo where both are in contention for the loyalty of the volunteers and regular soldiers alike, something the assigned commander there finds frustrating at best. But young Lt. Col. William Barrett Travis (Patrick Wilson) never stops trying to do his utmost, and eventually he earns some respect. What no one expects is Santa Anna's (Emilio Echevaria) winter trek, and the arrival of a couple of thousand Mexican troops is a rude awakening for all who happen to be at the Alamo at the time.

Billy Bob Thornton plays to the hilt the "Awww, shucks" attitude of a man forced almost daily to live down a reputation far bigger than any man could possibly claim. But as things in the movie get more serious, so does he, and the depth of his bravery in the face of even his own fears is impressive. Jason Patric is pain-wracked both from the death of his wife and his own illness, and despite trying to present a cavalier front, is a good enough actor for us all to see the wounds that lie barely beneath the surface. Dennis Quaid is good as the flawed General Houston; Emilio Echevaria is also quite good as the pompous - and merciless - General Santa Anna. But in this movie, the star is the story of the heroic last stand of 189 men, not any individual one of them. The script, though understandably unable to focus on every one of them, gives a large number of them just a few lines and actions that somehow manage to convey incredible courage in the face of utter hopelessness. That's testament to more than good acting, but to a really good screenplay and direction as well.

The battle scenes are brilliantly done; the sets and costuming are virtually flawless up to and including the coarseness of fabrics. Though the first hour or so of the movie is nicely done, it's really too slow even as set-up; the rest of the film, however, more than makes up for it with enough emotion and tension that you almost hope that this time - just this once! - the Alamo will prove victorious.

NOTE: I don't think it's possible to see The Alamo and not wonder if you would have stayed or gone, or if you could have peered over those walls and managed to keep shooting until you were shot. There's a line in the film that says something to the effect of considering what it is you're willing to fight for, and maybe die for. As awful as I knew the end of the movie would be, tears welled up when that line was spoken, while the men who were listening visibly hitched up their mental bootstraps and prepared to give everything for freedom. I wonder sometimes if there are many men (or women) like that left any more, and I find myself only able to be grateful that once upon a time, there were.

FAMILY SUITABILITY: The Alamo is rated PG-13 for "sustained intense battle scenes," which is about as accurate as I've ever seen a rating. The death isn't particularly graphic, but it's everywhere and it isn't pretty. There are also some very young men we see die which is almost certainly not suitable for viewing by youngsters. Anyone of about 12 and up, though, should see first The Patriot and then The Alamo. Freedom isn't free, and they need to understand far more than today's public education history classes will ever convey just how much in blood it really costs. And certainly fans of epic stories and our own western mythology will appreciate The Alamo for this interpretation of one of America's greatest such tales.