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The Alamo I used to play this game called the Hollywood Stock Exchange. Players buy and sell actors, movies and more like stocks and try to amass the most wealth possible. If Tom Cruise has new movie that makes $100 million, his stock goes up. When Ben Affleck makes Gigli, well, you get the picture. Of course, the best part of the game was speculation over big movie projects. The Alamo is one of those movies that would have started high, but plunged as problems increased. Originally, the film was supposed to be an R-rated movie helmed by Ron Howard and starring Russell Crowe. However, Disney and Howard had differences of opinion over the budget and content, so he pulled out, with Crowe following right behind. Then, The Alamo was supposed to be, with apologies to Robert Evans, Disney's Christmas gift to the world, and an Oscar contender. It coulda had class. It coulda been a contender. However, the movie was pushed into April. Now, it has a one-way ticket to palookaville, where it belongs. Dennis Quaid stars as Sam Houston - leader of the Texas rebellion against Mexican rule. He is readying his troops for a major, possibly deciding, battle against Mexican leader General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna (Emilio Echevarria), but Houston knows they will be outnumbered, and must fight intelligently to win. To help prepare for a possible attack by Santa Anna, Houston sends his trusted lieutenant James Bowie (Jason Patric) off to the Alamo, a makeshift fort in San Antonio that has been the site of several skirmishes between Texian (that's how they used to say it) and Mexican forces. Once there, Bowie spars with commanding officer Colonel William Travis (Patrick Wilson), and must deal with the arrival of the legendary Davy Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton) as well as thousands of Mexican troops ready to attack the Alamo and take back Texas once and for all. Will this small, ragtag band of men be able to defend the Alamo? I'm sure most of you know the Alamo was a horrible defeat for Texas independence forces, but that doesn't mean the movie has to be a foregone conclusion or fail to teach us something new. Writer/director John Lee Hancock and co-writers Leslie Bohem and Stephen Gaughen had a very important decision to make when formulating this movie. Would it be a special effects showcase that highlights the battle in graphic terms, or would it be a chance to teach people about the amazing men at the Alamo and what they believed in? Hancock, who is supposed to control and command the film, falls short on both accounts. I was most disappointed that we didn't get to learn more about Bowie, Houston, Travis and Crockett. Each one has a fascinating background that could have helped to explain why they wanted to fight an uphill battle, and in the case of Travis, Bowie and Crockett, why they wanted to fight an impossible battle at the Alamo. All of this would help us understand why Texas is important to these characters, contribute to our opinions of them, and explain their actions. Instead, we are left with a long, drawn out movie full of meaningless dialogue, a weak story, and an average climactic battle. Hancock goes through great pains to impose important moments on us, but he fails to give them the poignancy needed to elicit emotion. When we could have been getting crucial, relevant information, Hancock serves up meaningless scenes of bonding among the men and how they are facing certain death like heroes, while our director thinks putting sweet, uplifting music under the scene will somehow add weight to it. It lacks weight because we don't see it in the context of the big picture. I think he's trying to make this a buddy movie about the men at the Alamo, but he fails to establish those bonds among the characters and there is much more to the story than that. Hancock rarely tries to explain the battle between Mexico and Texas, why Santa Anna is fighting to take the Alamo, and Houston's overall effort to free Texas. We don't learn about Santa Anna's dictatorship of Mexico, and why Texas wants to break away. While we get some idea of it in Santa Anna's big speech to his military leaders on the eve of the Alamo's siege, more time could have made all of it more dramatic. Lacking this context, and the lack of explaining the characters' backgrounds, the performances of Thornton, Quaid and the rest of the cast don't have the impact that they could. Thornton is very charming, funny and endearing as Davy "King of the Wild Frontier" Crockett, but his performance is damaged by constant attempts to give his character one-liners that would be good for the TV commercials. Too often, Thornton is stuck uttering a comical line where it isn't appropriate and incorrectly lightens the dramatic mood, while Quaid is stuck trying to make Houston somewhat of a drunken buffoon at the beginning portion of the The Alamo, then must show us his leadership and brilliance later. These two aspects of Houston's character don't go together because Hancock makes Quaid overdo the Houston drinking problem early on. He can be a drunk who isn't a buffoon, but Hancock fails the character, while Echevarria shines as Santa Anna by bringing dignity and ruthlessness to his character. Finally, the movie needs a tighter pace absent the more important need to flesh out the characters. The movie feels like blah blah blah BOOM, as Hancock takes his time to get to the big battle, then gets through it very quickly. The situation is dramatic but Hancock needs to elevate it. What do these men think will happen if they lose? What is at stake? Also, like Pearl Harbor, he has tacked on a last act that shows Houston's ultimate victory for Texas, but it seems to be too much after sitting through a long, boring first hour and fifty minutes. This might have worked if the rest of the movie was better, but it's not. The Alamo could have been much better, but it is a failure in its current form. 1 Waffles (Out Of 4) Copyright 2004 - WaffleMovies.com
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