This review is for the shortened, two-hour, forty-one minute version.
John Wayne threw everything he had into making this film, at the apex of his stardom, and just for that, and the sacrifice it honors, I want to celebrate it. I just can't.
"The Alamo" presents the story of the heroic last stand of some 180 Texas irregulars against the massed might of Santa Anna's Mexican army, featuring Wayne both as director and actor (playing Davy Crockett, one of the defenders at the siege.) It's full of great images, solid performances, and affecting scenes. Also, it's terribly long (even the edited version I saw runs over two-and-a-half hours) and weakened by a tendency toward preachiness and lazy sentiment.
Is it entertaining? I say yes, albeit intermittently, even though it doesn't adhere to the facts and feels rather underbaked in the story department. Print the legend, as Wayne's patron John Ford was often quoted as saying, however spuriously, and "The Alamo" sort of does that, pushing the story as an exercise in rah-rah sentiment which strangely veers into liberal platitudes about republicanism and respecting one's foe even as he's bent on killing you to the last man.
Reading the reviews here, you get the sense more than you do with IMDb takes on other Wayne movie how much he attracts negativity from people who see him as an avatar of American imperialism. Yet "The Alamo" is the last film of Wayne's which deserves such opprobrium. The film soft-soaps the viciousness of Santa Anna, whose no-quarter approach to riot control did him in as an effective ruler, and sets up the title edifice as a kind of coming together of multi-ethnic harmony. Even given the context of legend-building, this plays way too good to be true.
The script, by Wayne's favorite writer James Edward Grant, pushes buttons without mercy or subtlety. This is the film where Denver Pyle, as one of the Alamo's defenders, marvels about the Mexicans bent on the slaughter of him and his comrades: "Even when I was killin' 'em, I was proud of 'em."
Wayne took a lousy part, a character already brilliantly defined on TV by Fess Parker, and did what he could with it. As director, he selflessly ceded the stage to his co-stars, especially Richard Widmark as a tough, no-nonsense Jim Bowie and Laurence Harvey as Col. William Travis, the most interesting character in the picture. Harvey, burdened somewhat by an on-and-off English accent, gives Travis a veneer that makes him likable, even as he plays loose with the facts in keeping his men in the fort. Harvey at least is clearly enjoying himself, and for that his scenes have real color and vim.
Some reviewers here say the film is cheated when cut a half-hour from the version first released in roadshow form. Certainly what I see here felt compromised by the absence of a resolution to a story arc involving a bad-guy American named Emil Sand and the woman he seeks to pressure into marriage. But it wasn't like I wanted this movie longer.
The finale at least is terrific. Call it "Wild Bunch 1.0" for the way Wayne shoots the battle itself, all quick cuts and grisly deaths with hardly a dollop of sentiment. It's visceral filmmaking, and shows Wayne could shoot action, however lacking Widmark and others found his direction in terms of character development.
Ultimately, "The Alamo" works okay as cinematic entertainment, aided greatly by William H. Clothier's cinematography which gives every shot that epic feeling that came so naturally in the 1960s and rarely thereafter. It's not entirely empty otherwise, Wayne's affable performance is on par with his later work and Grant manages to write some good dialogue here and there, like when Bowie learns the fate of his wife. But for such a legendary moment in American history, one is left wanting for much more.
John Wayne threw everything he had into making this film, at the apex of his stardom, and just for that, and the sacrifice it honors, I want to celebrate it. I just can't.
"The Alamo" presents the story of the heroic last stand of some 180 Texas irregulars against the massed might of Santa Anna's Mexican army, featuring Wayne both as director and actor (playing Davy Crockett, one of the defenders at the siege.) It's full of great images, solid performances, and affecting scenes. Also, it's terribly long (even the edited version I saw runs over two-and-a-half hours) and weakened by a tendency toward preachiness and lazy sentiment.
Is it entertaining? I say yes, albeit intermittently, even though it doesn't adhere to the facts and feels rather underbaked in the story department. Print the legend, as Wayne's patron John Ford was often quoted as saying, however spuriously, and "The Alamo" sort of does that, pushing the story as an exercise in rah-rah sentiment which strangely veers into liberal platitudes about republicanism and respecting one's foe even as he's bent on killing you to the last man.
Reading the reviews here, you get the sense more than you do with IMDb takes on other Wayne movie how much he attracts negativity from people who see him as an avatar of American imperialism. Yet "The Alamo" is the last film of Wayne's which deserves such opprobrium. The film soft-soaps the viciousness of Santa Anna, whose no-quarter approach to riot control did him in as an effective ruler, and sets up the title edifice as a kind of coming together of multi-ethnic harmony. Even given the context of legend-building, this plays way too good to be true.
The script, by Wayne's favorite writer James Edward Grant, pushes buttons without mercy or subtlety. This is the film where Denver Pyle, as one of the Alamo's defenders, marvels about the Mexicans bent on the slaughter of him and his comrades: "Even when I was killin' 'em, I was proud of 'em."
Wayne took a lousy part, a character already brilliantly defined on TV by Fess Parker, and did what he could with it. As director, he selflessly ceded the stage to his co-stars, especially Richard Widmark as a tough, no-nonsense Jim Bowie and Laurence Harvey as Col. William Travis, the most interesting character in the picture. Harvey, burdened somewhat by an on-and-off English accent, gives Travis a veneer that makes him likable, even as he plays loose with the facts in keeping his men in the fort. Harvey at least is clearly enjoying himself, and for that his scenes have real color and vim.
Some reviewers here say the film is cheated when cut a half-hour from the version first released in roadshow form. Certainly what I see here felt compromised by the absence of a resolution to a story arc involving a bad-guy American named Emil Sand and the woman he seeks to pressure into marriage. But it wasn't like I wanted this movie longer.
The finale at least is terrific. Call it "Wild Bunch 1.0" for the way Wayne shoots the battle itself, all quick cuts and grisly deaths with hardly a dollop of sentiment. It's visceral filmmaking, and shows Wayne could shoot action, however lacking Widmark and others found his direction in terms of character development.
Ultimately, "The Alamo" works okay as cinematic entertainment, aided greatly by William H. Clothier's cinematography which gives every shot that epic feeling that came so naturally in the 1960s and rarely thereafter. It's not entirely empty otherwise, Wayne's affable performance is on par with his later work and Grant manages to write some good dialogue here and there, like when Bowie learns the fate of his wife. But for such a legendary moment in American history, one is left wanting for much more.