"Alamo" Review & Analysis
Short and sweet: It just ain't very good.
"The Alamo," opening today, is one of those unfortunate films that's trying to be so many things at once all the different "heads" of the beast eventually get mad and start biting at eachother until it keels over dead. It's desire to be serious is offset by it's desire to be mythic, it's desire to be gritty and realistic is offset by it's desire to be suitable for a PG-13 rating, and it's desire for "fully developed" screen versions of it's legendary heroes is consumed both by it's desire for "dark sides" and it's desire for iconic speeches and "hero shots."
Worse still, it just looks and feels sloppy and obvious, the filmmakers all seem to be trying to make sure it "looks like movies like this should look," and it never develops a distinct voice.
To be sure, Director John Lee Hancock and his team certainly "know" quite a bit going into this: They KNOW that the "somber" moments require mandatory-since-Braveheart woodwind instruments on the soundtrack, they KNOW that the best shortcut to "humanize" the bad guys is to make one of them a young frightened guy and keep cutting to his closeup in battle, they KNOW that when rugged older frontiersmen gather around campfires in "realistic" movies one of them is required to tell a self-cleansing/regretful tale of Indian massacres, etc. Yes, they even KNOW that bad guys, regardless of national origin or time in history, all MUST march in formation and be photographed in the manner of the Nazis in "Triumph of the Will."
They KNOW all that, though, for the same reason most people who see it know the same: Because it's all stuff thats been done again and again in every single "big" historical actioner since "Braveheart." Hancock manages a few clever shots and some unexpected moments are sprinkled throughout the film, but in the end he can't aquit himself of a basic fact: EVERYTHING in this movie has been done better somewhere else.
The actors, for the most part, do their best amid a film that has no real plan for them or their characters and emerge basically unscathed.
Dennis Quaid, playing Sam Houston, sadly comes out the worst of the bunch. Quaid is a capable actor still in the midst of an unusual slow-burn of a comeback, but this isn't the role for him and the film does him no favors: Reputedly cut severely for time, Houston's scenes are limited to drunken bluster in the first part, patriotic bluster at the end and a long stretch of middle where he barely appears.
Billy Bob Thorton, as Davey Crockett, comes out the best of `em. He gets all the best lines and the best character arc (the man who trades on a heroic legend that he despises but rises to a different sort of heroic legend to inspire others) and a sendoff that's not quite on for the ages but, compared to everything else going on, is pretty memorable.
The silver lining is, I the film isn't NEARLY as "reviisionist" in it's history (or, rather, it's deviation from legend) as the early word had foretold, so though we'll still be hearing the caterwalling of Culture War conservatives over this I don't think the "story" will have much traction. In simple math: maybe THIS non-story will only rate ONE segment on "The O'Reilly Factor." Here's hoping.
Jeffery Wells, who has a "Hollywood Elsewhere" column on Moviepoopshoot.com, damns the film with faint praise but liked it enough. It leads off his Friday column:
http://www.moviepoopshoot.com/elsewhere/index.html
Roger Ebert, on the other hand, gives it probably the most favorable review of any major critic:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/wkp-news-alamo09f.html
I've got real doubts that this film will have any legs, or even win the weekend like it needs to. Look for this on DVD soon, A LOT sooner than Disney expected.
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