"As goes the Alamo, so goes Texas!"

Rating: 7/10 (4 October 2019)

It's been quite some time since I've seen the 1960 movie of the same name, but my gut feel leads me to consider I liked that one better. It certainly had a more stellar cast in a head to head match-up, with John Wayne in the role of Davy Crockett, Richard Widmark as Jim Bowie, Laurence Harvey as Colonel William Travis, and Richard Boone portraying Sam Houston. John Wayne doubled as director for that film, and his treatment offered perhaps a bit more even handed direction that didn't overtly paint the Mexican Army as villains, even though their mission was to march directly through San Antonio in order to subdue the rest of Texas under the Mexican banner. In this picture, Santa Anna's (Emilio Echevarria) character is represented along the same lines as say, Adolph Hitler, caring very little for the humanity of his soldiers, while describing them as little chickens, in other words, quite expendable when it comes to doing battle. That attitude also extended to the opposition, declaring that no prisoners would be taken alive, thereby calling for a massacre of everyone inside the dilapidated confines of The Alamo itself.
Of the principals, Billy Bob Thornton probably acquits himself best as former frontiersman and Congressman, Davy Crockett. Preferring to be called David, there's a scene in which he's shown to display his amazing marksmanship by shooting an epaulet off the shoulder of Santa Anna. I doubt if that ever occurred, so a bit of poetic license there. Wracked with tuberculosis, back then known as consumption, Jim Bowie (Jason Patric) has very little to do in the story, though he was given a mission by Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid) to retrieve the cannon from the Alamo, which had been the subject of rival ownership between Texas and Mexico. Because of Bowie's status, most of the soldiers deferred to Bowie regarding military matters instead of the actual commander in charge, and at a critical juncture, Bowie had to nod his assent for the orders of Lieutenant Colonel William Travis (Patrick Wilson) to be followed.
If memory serves, the battle scenes in the original movie were more remarkably staged, though both pictures present the Mexican Army as resplendent in their military uniforms. Where this picture took things a step further was the aftermath of the siege, whereby Sant Anna, remining convinced of his status as a Napoleon of the West, decided to engage an advance led by Sam Houston which was bent on avenging the losses at The Alamo. Patiently awaiting a tactical mistake by the Mexican general, Houston's rag tag soldiers decimated the enemy troops in a mere matter of eighteen minutes. Apparently, Santa Anna overlooked the all important fact that even Napoleon, at the height of his career, had met his Waterloo.