Audience wins when battle is told so well

Web Posted: 03/28/2004 12:00 AM CST

Larry Ratliff
Express-News Film Critic

Remember Davy Crockett?

Not like this, you don't: fiddling the night away in a hoedown early in "The Alamo," and later talking about why he no longer eats taters as Santa Anna's forces close in for the kill.

The Alamo

It may seem outrageous, but Billy Bob Thornton's skewed take on the larger-than-life ex-congressman from Tennessee essentially carries the 13th feature film about the fall of the Alamo.

Thornton, Dennis Quaid, Jason Patric ("Narc") and Mexican actor Emilio Echevarría ("Y Tu Mamá También") head the cast in director John Lee Hancock's cinematic battle hymn to the Republic of Texas.

Moviegoers accustomed to nonstop action in epic films may feel that this "Alamo" doesn't move along fast enough. But the script by director Hancock, Leslie Bohem (USA's miniseries "Taken") and Stephen Gaghan ("Traffic") is meticulous in character development and daringly subtle in treading the line between myth and reality.

Bowie and Crockett discuss their inflated reputations at one point, for instance, but only Bowie's demise sticks to Alamo lore, with guns blazing in bed. Crockett's end denies the myth but not his heroism or character.

Hancock also forgoes John Wayne's "rally around the flag" style of the 1960 version of "The Alamo."

A native Texan, Hancock is smart enough to realize that moviegoers in other states (and especially in potentially fertile foreign markets) may not be as familiar as Texans are with the bloody San Antonio siege that ultimately led to independence from Mexico.

He begins with glimpses of the battle's aftermath, including a dog licking a soldier's bloody face. Gen. Sam Houston (Quaid), encamped miles away, can only stare straight ahead in rage as wails of "They're all dead. The Alamo has fallen!" reach his tent.

Normally a prologue like this wouldn't set the stage for frivolity. But by rolling back the calendar a year to 1835, Hancock shows that a story that ends in sadness and sacrifice contained moments of merriment.

Houston, a heavy drinker, is selling two things when he bumps into old friend Crockett at a Washington, D.C., social affair: mescal and Texas. It's impossible to tell which is more intoxicating.

With the promise of 640 acres of choice land for signing on as a militiaman, Crockett heads south to a rundown mission that's serving as a fort in San Antonio. He'll join brash young Lt. Col. William Travis (Patrick Wilson of HBO's "Angels in America"), ornery knife fighter James Bowie (Patric) and fewer than 200 other Texas soldiers and volunteers, women, children and slaves.

Crockett, of course, has no idea that Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna (Echevarría) is on a forced march with about 2,400 troops to put an end to what he believes is an uprising of "pirates" intent on stealing Mexican land.

A personable man whose reputation greatly precedes him, Crockett is surprised when he arrives to see that the tension is thick enough to cut with a Bowie knife.

"I understood the fighting was over. Ain't it?"

As Santa Anna's troops lay siege to the Alamo and inch closer to the beleaguered band of Texians, Crockett's Tennessee volunteers and a band of Tejano fighters led by Juan Seguin (Spanish actor Jordi Mollá), Hancock molds characters on both sides of the walls.

He doesn't limit the screen time to his marquee stars. There's plenty of Quaid's pompous bellow. And as Bowie, who's doomed by the deep, bloody coughs brought on by "consumption," Patric emotes effectively from his bedridden position. But Hancock also devotes ample screen time to Santa Anna, Seguin and two slaves, Sam (Afemo Omilami) and Joe (Edwin Hodge), belonging to Bowie and Travis. Sam and Joe, of course, are behind the walls for different reasons than the rest.

Echevarría, who played Santa Anna a few years ago in a stage farce, struts like a peacock in full bloom much of the time as the "Napoleon of the West."

Santa Anna chuckles when he hears that the legendary Davy Crockett is holed up in the Alamo. Then he loses a golden epaulet from his uniform jacket when Crockett tests "Old Betsy's" long-range accuracy.

Echevarría's performance is almost as entertaining as Thornton's, and definitely more menacing.

There is never any doubt, though, that Hancock has placed the fate of the movie in Thornton's hands.

He brings humor to the proceedings. More importantly, he perfectly channels a Crockett who knows he's just a man but must live up to the legend who some say can ride a lightning bolt.

He also brings the film to a reverential halt with a bone-chilling story about the only real battle he's been in before. The long tale doesn't move the plot forward, but it gives Crockett a chance to step down from his pedestal and become just another soldier of misfortune.

When the Mexican army finally attacks, Hancock is fairly effective at staging the close-quarters combat. If he doesn't fully engage the viewers' emotions, perhaps it's because many of the shots are shrouded in darkness.

Otherwise, "The Alamo" is on solid ground technically. Hancock took a chance by shooting all his scenes on location at the 51-acre Alamo set built near Dripping Springs. A director has more control on a soundstage, but the au naturel approach paid off, bringing a gritty reality to every scene.

Academy Award-winning cinematographer Dean Semler ("Dances With Wolves") finds pictorial beauty on more than one field of screams.

A movie called "The Alamo" should end when the last body falls in San Antonio. Hancock keeps the story rolling onto the Battle of San Jacinto.

For those who've forgotten their Texas history, Santa Anna, the man who would be Napoleon, is in for a startling surprise.

In other words, it's Waterloo, take two.