Thoughtful and emotionally truthful historical epic

Rating: 9/10 (5 September 2010)

I can't understand why this film aroused so much negative criticism when it came out, because it is head and shoulders above the John Wayne version, which makes the assumption that everyone knows about this and believes in the Texan cause before the film even gets going. I am British, and therefore outside the whole myth-making process that surrounds this story, but even I was caught up in a film that tried to depict events and characters as they really were, and that created a much more emotionally moving depiction in the process. For weeks after I saw it, I read everything I could around the story, which must say something about the impact of the film. The best part for me was the visual detail and the attention to the creation of a believable social and cultural backdrop against which the story emerged; I particularly liked Jim Bowie's sister-in-law fetching a folk-healer to help him, and his memories of the gracious, exotic, Tejano society into which he entered when he married his wife.
I also found Travis's stiff-necked, unappealing integrity entirely credible from an emotional point of view in relation to his recorded actions, and Davy Crockett's fiddle variations on the ramparts has added a new tale to his continuing legend. Santa Ana came across as a pompous, capricious twit - which was borne out by everything I subsequently read about him.
I have failed to give it a 10 because I would have preferred it to have been made as a mini-series, which would have allowed for more character development and more pursuit of some of the stories of the different characters.