SECTION: HOUSTON; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 1011 words

HEADLINE: 'The Alamo' is battle worth remembering;
Director walks fine line between action, history

SOURCE: Staff

BYLINE: BRUCE WESTBROOK

BODY:

   Besieged by delays, rumors and bad press, writer-director John Lee Hancock must have felt he was fighting a no-win battle with his new version of The Alamo. He had too many characters to serve, too much history to tell and too little time to show it.

   But at least his Alamo has its heart in the right place. As in his first film, The Rookie, the former Houstonian shows respect if not reverence for his state's mythical heritage, even while viewing it from modern perspectives.

   To freshen the hoary story, Hancock takes revisionist stabs at diversity and honesty. Rewriting a script he inherited when Ron Howard left the project (with an uncredited boost from John Sayles), he adds Tejanos, or Mexicans in Texas, who joined Anglos' fight for independence. He also demythologizes the heroic icons John Wayne lionized while directing his jingoistic star vehicle in 1960.

   Like Wayne, Hancock wanted to deliver a three-hour epic. But after test screenings reportedly didn't go well, Disney demanded a tighter cut. Given a four-month delay to edit, he streamlined The Alamo, but in the process frayed narrative threads among his large cast.

   The historical context certainly seems sketchy. Even Texans brought up to "remember the Alamo" may have trouble grasping the nuances of Mexican Gen. Santa Anna's siege of a mission turned fortress held by a small band of Texas settlers defying his dictatorship in 1836.

   Yet others may grow impatient for action. The build-up to battle is prolonged and talky, and for a classic tale of heroic defiance, this Alamo feels more restrained than rousing.

   Again, it's no-win. When Hancock supplies history, the action and drama bog down. And even when he's right, he's wrong, since so many historians disagree about what happened at the site in what is now downtown San Antonio.

   Hancock also has a hard act to follow. Wayne's film has been the defining Alamo movie, and in some ways it still is. He may have played even more loosely with the facts, but his lavish epic bristled with grandeur.

   Hancock's Alamo is more down and dirty, if only because it's less starry-eyed than even-handed. His Texas rebels are hard-living opportunists drawn from history, not movies. They include Gen. Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid), a heavy drinker and hesitant fighter; Jim Bowie (Jason Patric), a slave-trading malcontent; and Lt. Col. William B. Travis (Patrick Wilson), who deserts his family before taking a command for which he's unprepared.

   Yet their resolve remains powerful, and their fight still resonates as Texas' defining moment. The courage and sacrifice at the Alamo sparked a pride and independence that are ingrained in the only state that was once a separate nation.

   It's hard to get such heroism wrong, and Hancock doesn't. You feel for his men, perhaps even more because they're so human. They believed their cause was worth the ultimate sacrifice, and their martyrdom inspired ultimate victory.

   The Alamo even winds up as a feel-good experience. Unlike all versions since the silent era, it extends the story to its logical conclusion: the Battle of San Jacinto, outside present-day Houston. Like the payback bombing raid at the end of Pearl Harbor (from the same studio), this victory, though tacked on, turns a tale of sobering defeat into triumph.

   Production values are solid, from costumes to pyrotechnics to a handsome new Alamo village erected on a ranch in Dripping Springs, disregarding Wayne's still-standing set in Bracketville. Other states and Canada were considered by the number crunchers at Disney, who may not have realized how vital it was to shed fictional Texas blood on real Texas soil.

   The Alamo's cast is a mixed bag, with no one approaching Billy Bob Thornton's star turn as Davy Crockett. The Arkansan seems born to play the Tennessee frontiersman and former congressman, oozing wily country-boy charm and grasping his duty to legend while remaining down to earth.

   Whether boosting the men's spirits with tall tales, vexing the Mexicans with rooftop fiddle playing, taking long-range pot shots at Santa Anna or delivering a speech of hearty defiance, Thornton makes this sprawling ensemble film his own.

   The role of Houston was reduced after Russell Crowe signed off - and it was cut even more, reportedly, in the protracted edit. But that's just as well, since Quaid's general is a blustery caricature of bombastic command.

   Patric gives Bowie unsympathetic shadings without losing his resolve in the face of his body's siege by disease. Houston actor Brandon Smith, who played a surly barkeep in the shadow of the Alamo in Lonesome Dove, has a good turn as Lt. Col. J.C. Neill, the man who turned over command to Travis.

   Wilson is the conscience of the film as Travis. Though untrained to lead men, he's resilient, compassionate and determined. When Travis says, "Surrender is not an option," he foreshadows modern Texas hero Gene Kranz of NASA, whose "Failure is not an option" was the battle cry of Apollo 13.

   Even so, he's bland compared to Laurence Harvey's flamboyant Travis of 1960, and he's denied a key scene, since Hancock ditches the familiar (but debated) element of Travis drawing a line in the sand and challenging his men to stay or go.

   Mexican actor Emilio Echevarria as Santa Anna avoids cartoonish villainy yet is drunk with power as "the Napoleon of the West." As Tejano defender Juan Seguin, Spanish actor Jordi Molla is intriguing but token, having lost much screen time in the edit.

   But there's no satisfying everyone, not with a story as big and emotionally charged as that of The Alamo. The only possible justice is to live up to the legend, and in that battle Hancock does not surrender.

   His Alamo may be flawed, but it tells a tale that still has the power to stir our souls.