Emotionally flat, vapid, pretentious epic wannabe

Rating: 2/10 (5 October 2004)

This movie was agonizingly boring. The screenplay was a pretentious attempt at creating an epic from an historical event. The actors all seemed to be saying their lines as if the film was a walk-through rather than the final cut and the lack of apparent emotion was the inevitable result. The director compounded the problem by lingering through scenes in a vain attempt to generate some emotion by fixating on the actors for what seemed like minutes after nothing new was occurring. The result for the viewer is a feeling that you are viewing a film in slow motion-indeed I used the fast forward repeatedly to move through the DVD version of the film to avoid such moments of stultifying boredom. To no avail, however. The only saving grace was that the movie was historically accurate, unlike the John Wayne version. I also question the political correctness of a movie that again shows the Alamo solely from the perspective of the caucasian American settlers who led the revolt against Mexican authority. 44 years ago, when the original Alamo movie was filmed, Hispanic-Americans were marginalized in American society and no one cared if they were bashed in films. However, it now seems totally disrespectful if not ethnically perverse to film a new version which fails to convey a Mexican and Tejano perspective on the conflict. Like Lincoln, Santa Ana had to decide whether to allow a substantial portion of his nation to secede or to attempt by force of arms to assert authority over the seceding regions, such as Texas. And many Tejanos (Mexican natives of Texas) resisted Santa Ana's attempts to reassert central authority over Texas, preferring autonomy from Mexico City. Without such Tejano support it is unlikely that the relatively recent American arrivals could have succeeded in their quest for Texan independence. Yet the movie offers no portrayals of or allusions to Tejano political support for Texan independence. It would also have been interesting to see how the Tejanos were ultimately dispossessed in large part after Texas obtained statehood, despite the financial and military support of many Tejanos for Texan independence.