Alamo links
SF Chronicle: Forget the Alamo
San Antonio Express-News editorial:
Web Posted: 04/10/2004 12:00 AM CDT OK, you know how it ends, and the hoopla
— around here, anyway — has lasted even longer than the Texas
Revolution itself, but at last "The Alamo" has opened. Yet again,
Santa Anna's minions are laying siege, Travis is mustering his ragtag men,
Bowie is battling mortal illness and Crockett finds himself holed up in a
battered church a long, long way from his Tennessee home. Director/co-writer
John Lee Hancock's rendering of the old story — the 11th since the first
such movie in 1911 — has received mixed reviews. (Our man Larry Ratliff,
who bestowed three jalapeños, considers it the best one yet.) Frankly,
Hancock's "Alamo" will be worth the multimillion-dollar effort if
it manages to replace John Wayne's hackneyed 1960 epic in the public psyche.
It's worth remembering, as the Duke didn't, that the heroes of the Alamo were
ordinary men behaving admirably in extraordinary circumstances. That's what
heroism is.
The paper's review
Toronto Star: Mexican responses to the film
New York Times review
Boston Globe review
LA Times review
Houston Chronicle review