When Does Honor Turn to Folly?

Rating: 7/10 (1 February 2005)

"No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for HIS country."
Gen George S. Patton
I settled down with the spouse to watch the DVD of the Alamo last Saturday night. Having no particular affinity for Texas, and being somewhat embarrassed by the US history of chauvinistic expansionism, the main reason we wished to see the movie was to check out the props and costumes. In the first scene the camera pans over the carnage left by the Mexican army and there, in extreme close-up, lay a broken pair of spectacles. "Riding temple" glasses from the 1880's! "ANACHRONISM", I thought. Spouse and I have been living history reenactors for ten years. Our era is the 1820's to 1830's so we pretty much know what the details of the era should look like. Of course, even the "professionals" at Williamsburg, Virginia, lapse sometimes when it comes to glasses, shoes and pocket watches, so we can cut some slack for a Hollywood movie. As for the movie? How did we know that it would be such a moving experience and become such a topic of conversation at the dinner table?
This is a great story of people caught up in circumstances beyond their control who decide to follow their individual concepts of "honor" and "right" to the end. I won't go into great detail explaining the plot as do so many of the reviewers on this site. Besides, this being a true life story, there is no plot. Character is everything. Travis, the peacock, who comes to understand that leadership is more than rank and fancy uniforms. Bowie, the ex-slave trader/duelist, who is running from (or to) his past. And then there's Crockett. Billy Bob Thornton steals the show as Congressman Crockett. Every scene that he appears in belongs to him. Lock, stock and barrel. Is there a 21st century equivalent to David Crockett? Someone who, in his lifetime, saw stage plays and "penny dreadful" booklets about his exploits produced? Did he begin to believe his own hype, or was he striving to live up to it? Thornton does a great job in his characterization.
This movie was probably a dud in the theaters because few people learn history anymore. The story can be slow and confusing to someone unacquainted with the facts. If you think that the Alamo is just an old mission church in downtown San Antonio, do a little reading on Texas history before viewing. For those reviewers who felt that the Santa Ana character was a stereotype, do some research. He wasn't a stereotype, he was the PROTOTYPE. Almost every military dictator in Latin America since his time has followed in the footsteps of Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana.
For the reviewer from Texas that denied that Crockett survived the siege and was executed later: Some evidence has surfaced in the last ten years (in the form of letters of Mexican army officers) that Crockett and a few Tennesseeans did survive. One letter had Crockett begging and crying for mercy. I liked the movie's take on this rumor. Now, about the props: After getting past the 1880's spectacles, everything was close to perfect. Travis' lap desk, the lanterns, the cooking fires, Crockett's fiddle, the clothes. A British Army officer named Basil Hall toured the US in 1827 and published a book with illustrations, one of which shows a backwoods hunter in Georgia decked out in tail coat and top hat with his shooting pouch and powder horn slung on his shoulder and leaning on a long rifle. Just like in this movie. There could have been a few percussion cap rifles scattered among all the flintlocks since they had been around for over ten years prior. Travis' double barrel fowler was a nice touch. Complaints about props?: A black-powder shooter can tell that they were shooting blanks. No safe charge that is stuffed down the muzzle of a flintlock sounds the same as a tightly patched lead ball. Also, as in so many "period" movies, there was WAY too much light in the interior scenes. To get the feel of period atmosphere, nothing matches the formal dinner scene from the 1997 version of PERSUASION.