SECTION: Section E;Part 1;Page 1;Column 1;Movies, Performing Arts/Weekend Desk

LENGTH: 1134 words

HEADLINE: FILM REVIEW;
A Mythic Last Stand Stripped of Fantasy

BYLINE: By ELVIS MITCHELL

BODY:

   The oppressively solemn film "The Alamo" marches in the line of earlier Disney-financed looks at historic moments like "Pearl Harbor." In re-enacting, with a heavy heart and a heavy hand, the actual events surrounding the storied 1836 battle in the war of independence fought by Texas against the Mexican forces of General Santa Anna, the movie is both elegiac and trivial. This is an accomplishment of sorts, generally of the sort that no one plans.

   The filmmakers' motivation is obviously to strip away the ennobling layers of lacquer applied to the lives of Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and the others fighting to wrest Texas from Mexico and establish a republic -- a sheen polished by previous projects, including the poisonously intoxicating coats lavished by Disney's own "Davy Crockett" shows.

    But the act of grinding away simple-minded fantasy isn't enough. We're left with figures who are less than mythic but also less than human -- theirs is the small-mindedness found in those Time-Life histories that turned everyone into cranky back-stabbers. The characters here are deprived of even the romance of pursuing what's right, as John Wayne did in the hilariously simple-minded 1960 "Alamo," which he directed and in which he seems to be looking for Khrushchev.

   The director John Lee Hancock -- working from a script credited to him, Leslie Bohem and Stephen Gaghan -- strains so mightily to bring a human aspect to the material that the movie limps as if it had a pulled muscle. Raising a cloud of dust from dragging an injured leg, the film can't support the burden of delivering a drama with a mammoth running time, a climactic catastrophe that nearly every American knows and no women with major speaking roles. (Mr. Hancock 's gift for family stories, best displayed in the modest melodrama "The Rookie," is of no use to him here.)

   The picture starts with some squabbling over the best way to conduct the Texas Revolution -- an attempt to add a political context to the film, or as close as it comes to that. As commander of Texas's army, Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid), sporting a jaw set with either determination or rigor mortis, knows how he wants things done and doesn't care who objects. He is saddled with the impossible task of serving as the film's emotional anchor. His discomfort is contagious; it infects the entire movie.

   The introduction of the populist leader Jim Bowie (Jason Patric), sporting a knife as big as his ego, as the nemesis of the priggish young martinet Lt. Col. William Travis (Patrick Wilson) doesn't enliven the proceedings. It's only when the Tennessee congressman-turned-frontiersman Davy Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton)
-- "he prefers David," one of his men notes -- appears that the movie has a figure scaled to the size of the production.

   Crockett is slightly abashed by having to coexist with his own myth -- but only slightly. His mouth drawn into a shady grin, Mr. Thornton plays Crockett with a disarming self-awareness; he deals with the gantlet of mockery he must endure with an appreciative graciousness.

   His presence in "The Alamo" is a rather unfortunate reminder of a better demystification of American history made by Disney, "Tombstone," in which the mythic figures of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday had to coexist with their penny-dreadful pulp versions.

   Mr. Thornton's Crockett not so secretly enjoys his celebrity, and one of the better scenes in "The Alamo" deals with an actor playing a Crockett-inspired protagonist onstage and worriedly adjusting a raccoon-skin hat that seems to be made from an entire pet shop.

   But if fame creates expectations, Mr. Thornton's Crockett has made his peace with this condition. His performance is lost in a film that is more of a schematic success than a dramatic one. This movie is awash in minutiae like the gilt-edged bone china that the dandy Santa Anna (broadly but effectively played by Emilio Echevarria) uses for his coffee while fashioning his battle plan. Vignettes abound, like Bowie's persistent racism and the sad pride of Juan Seguin (well portrayed by Jordi Molla), who's assigned to flee the Alamo to inform Sam Houston of the campaign's progress.

   But these elements aren't sufficiently fleshed out, and they become digressive rather than discursive, robbing the movie of a soul. "The Alamo," which opens nationwide today, lacks the telling ruggedness of William C. Davis's roiling and formidable tome "Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie and William Barret Travis" -- though the book must have inspired much of this picture's tone.

   In keeping with the movie's historical doggedness, Mr. Hancock and his team staged the epic battle at night with a horrific mercilessness that's accurate, though anticlimactic, because the film seems to be grieving for its own losses before the disastrous engagement begins. This plagued project, with a release date postponed from last Christmas, seems to have been beaten down by the reports of production delays, so much so that it has developed a siege legend similar to the Alamo itself.

   And the aging process didn't improve the final product, either. Ron Howard, who remains as co-producer, was initially supposed to direct with a cast that included Russell Crowe and with a John Sayles script that might have drawn an R rating for violence and would certainly have cost the studio more money. Both actor and director hit the ejector button; Mr. Crowe went on to star in another man's-man project, "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," and Mr. Howard made "The Missing," a flawed venture.

   Initially, Mr. Howard may have been attracted by the idea of dramatizing patriotism in the midst of a moment that looks like failure, as his film "Apollo 13" demonstrates. This concept only plays out in the last section of "The Alamo, " after Houston and his army take the fight to the arrogant Santa Anna.

   By that point, a line from "Apollo 13" had come eerily true: "Houston, we have a problem."