I love it when I come across a DVD in the Video Store that I wanted to see in the theaters… then forgot all about it… and now here it is right in front of me! It’s like finding that $20 you forgot you had in your wallet. The Alamo is one such film for me. So last night when I came across it on the shelf I snapped it up and took it on home. Did it live up to the excitement in my head? No.
There are several things that The Alamo does right. First of all, unlike Titanic or Pearl Harbour, The Alamo is actually about (wait for it) THE ALAMO. Where Titanic is really about Leo and his twit chick, and Pearl Harbour is about Ben and his twit chick, the story of The Alamo revolves completely around it. The Alamo isn’t just the backdrop for the movie… it IS the movie. That’s a refreshing change from the average Hollywood “historical film” drivel we’re usually subjected to.
The cinematography in this movie is just fantastic. They practically built the whole town from scratch which gave the environment a real feeling of authenticity. The walls, dirt, costumes, everything just worked visually in this flick.
Every film I see Billy Bob Thornton in I gain more and more respect for the man. Playing Davy Crockett, Thornton was amazingly engaging every second he was on the screen. Dennis Quaid, playing General Houston, did the exact same thing for me, just not quite as effective as Thornton. The only problem is that besides their two performances… the acting was generally weak in a film that needed to ride on the shoulders of strong acting. Even Jason Patric, who I generally like, was dogging it on screen. All the characters were basically stereotypes and painfully two-dimensional. The only relief from it was General Santa Ana’s half compassionate right hand man… but that was about it.
Soundtrack is something I don’t often mention in my posts, but in The Alamo it was mostly distracting and didn’t do much for me to enhance the mood or help in the telling of the story. Also, the Special Features were a bit weak. The “Making Of” documentary really wasn’t much more that a marketing tool. So much more could have been done with this… some good documentary stuff on the actual Alamo would have been smart. Oh well.
The story of The Alamo was solid. It stayed focused and never lost sight of what the movie was about. Ultimately the performance turned in by Thornton saves this film from itself. A film that suffered from sub-par direction from director John Hancock (who also wrote the fantastic script for Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil), less than stellar performances, a distracting soundtrack and sometimes forced dialog. I wanted to like this movie more, but all I can muster up for it is a 6/10.
