The most under-rated western since "Heaven's Gate"

Rating: 8/10 (29 January 2005)

Unlikely to win the kind of critical kudos that befell Michael Cimino's initially much maligned "Heaven's Gate" on it's subsequent reassessment, John Lee Hancock's "The Alamo" is nevertheless a film ripe for re-evaluation with the passage of time. Whereas John Wayne's version of events was a sentimental, jingoistic hymn to the Republic Hancock takes a more critical, revisionist view that was unlikely to please post 9/11 audiences and yet this is a much more authentically heroic film than Wayne's cynical piece of political posturing. This is a naive, primitive picture whose heroes are little men writ large by history and whose sacrifice is all the more noble by it's very lack of forethought. On hindsight this is a perfect post 9/11 movie; the heroes of the twin towers were similarly 'little men' made great by an even more monstrous historical event. Consequently the film is genuinely moving. All the performances are first-rate, far eclipsing those of the original and it is visually superb (courtesy of Dean Semler's cinematography). It is also brilliantly directed and intelligently scripted. Indeed a triumph for all concerned and the most shamefully undervalued western since "Heaven's Gate".