April 9, 2004, Friday ,THIRD EDITION

SECTION: ARTS; Pg. C1

LENGTH: 820 words

HEADLINE: 'THE ALAMO':

A PROBLEMATIC EPIC SEEMS TORN BETWEEN THE LEGEND AND THE FACTS OF TEXAS
'ALAMO': A BLUR OF LEGEND AND FACT

BYLINE: By Ty Burr, Globe Staff

BODY:

   "Remember the Alamo!" cries General Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid), urging his army of "Texians" forward to avenge the deaths of the 189 men who fell at the famous San Antonio mission in 1836. That scene comes almost at the end of "The Alamo," John Lee Hancock's new epic telling of the story, and you may be prompted to wonder: Which Alamo are we supposed to be remembering? The incisive, anti-heroic battle of wills the film spends much  time setting up? Or the chest-beating paean to Manifest Destiny the film turns into?

      The real struggle in "The Alamo" is between historic revisionism and Hollywood notions of sacrifice, and it's not much of a contest: Hollywood wins, as it did in John Wayne's sprawling, factually spurious 1960 film. But the more interesting aspects of this troubled production don't give up without a fight. This is a movie in which Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and Lieutenant Colonel William Travis are grievously flawed individuals redeemed only when their backs are against the wall. Houston comes off even worse, if that's possible. Before the film wraps them in the flag, they're fascinating characters, testimony to the bullheaded entrepreneurial streak that built this country and to the public's devouring need for heroes.

   Much has been written about the film's bumpy road to the screen. What was once to be an R-rated mega-budget extravaganza, written by John Sayles, directed by Ron Howard, and starring Russell Crowe as Crockett, is now a PG-13-rated over-budget extravaganza directed by the guy who made "The Rookie" and starring Billy Bob Thornton as Crockett. Originally slated for a December 2003 release, "Alamo" was held back for extensive recutting, bringing what had been a three-hour epic down to two hours and two minutes.

   What's left is a deeply compromised film, if not a broken one. Yet pockets of "The Alamo" bristle with unexpected vitality, and the casting of Thornton turns out to have been both absurd and inspired. His portrayal of the aging former congressman behind the tall tales has an irreverent, aching awareness of the gulf between legend and fact, and, in one scene, Thornton delivers a campfire reminiscence about a youthful massacre of Native Americans that nags at you like a toothache through the rest of the film. Crockett also plays the fiddle looking like Charlie Daniels in a foulard, and even Thornton appears to think that one's a bit rich.

   As played by Jason Patric, Jim Bowie is a belligerent drunk who spends the last half of the film - including the final battle - dying from tuberculosis in the Alamo infirmary. His nemesis, Travis (Patrick Wilson), is an ambitious dandy whom we see deserting his wife and two children in the opening scenes. Houston is a drunk and an opportunist willing to sacrifice the Alamo for an independent Texas. "They are not soldiers, but pirates," sneers General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna (Emilio Echevarria), and he's not half wrong.

   Why, then, do we ultimately feel for these men as the 13-day siege comes to a bloody predawn close? Because, as Houston pontificates about nationhood from his position miles away, and as Washington watches uneasily for the fate of the Republic of Texas to be decided, the defenders of the Alamo salvage what meaning they can from their certain death. Travis unbends, and, in a final speech to his troops, asks them to consider "what is it you value so highly that you are willing to fight and maybe die for. We will call that Texas." This is a small, defiant, personal heroism, created on the fly and having little to do with the pious myths of Texas that today's politicians prefer to borrow.

   It should be noted that Travis's speech is marred by mismatched editing, and that signs of haste and uncertainty pock "Alamo" like buckshot. On one hand, we get an unusual cannonball's-eye-view flyover shot of the mission and on the other we have far too many secondary characters without enough to do, such as Sergeant William Ward (Leon Rippy), and Tejano captain Juan Seguin (Jordi Molla). The film pauses for the slaves (Afemo Omilami and Edwin Hodge) owned by Bowie and Travis to discuss deserting to free Mexico - that's already more nuance than "Gods and Generals" had in its entire four hours - but wades back to the shallow end of the pool for the rushed, recut battle of San Jacinto, at which Houston's Texians defeated Santa Anna six weeks after the Alamo.

   His men want blood, but Houston would rather have an independent Texas: His is the face of the future. The face of the past - and of a smarter, sadder, more ornery "Alamo" that goes down kicking - is that of Thornton's Crockett, a man searching for a frontier that is already vanishing, and searching in the wrong place to boot. He's far from John Wayne's coon skin-cap-wearing hero, but closer to something we could use.