The Alamo (2004 film)
| The Alamo | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | John Lee Hancock |
| Written by | Leslie Bohem Stephen Gaghan John Lee Hancock |
| Produced by | Ron Howard Mark Johnson |
| Starring | Dennis Quaid Billy Bob Thornton Jason Patric Patrick Wilson Emilio Echevarría Jordi Mollà |
| Cinematography | John O'Connor Dean Semler |
| Edited by | Eric L. Beason |
| Music by | Carter Burwell |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Touchstone Pictures |
Release dates |
United States
|
Running time | 137 minutes |
| Country | Template:Film US |
| Languages | English and Spanish |
| Budget | $145 million |
| Box office | $25,819,961 |
The Alamo is a 2004 American war film about the Battle of the Alamo during the Texas Revolution. The film was directed by Texan John Lee Hancock, produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and Mark Johnson, and distributed by Touchstone Pictures.
The screenplay is credited to John Lee Hancock, John Sayles, Stephen Gaghan and Leslie Bohem. In contrast to the earlier 1960 film, the 2004 film attempts to depict the political points of view of both the Mexican and Texan sides; Santa Anna is a more prominent character.
The film received mixed to negative reviews by critics and commercially became extremely unsuccessful. It is officially the second biggest box office 'bomb' in cinema history, after Cutthroat Island.
Plot
The film begins in March 1836 in the Texas town of San Antonio de Bexar, site of the Alamo, where bodies of Texan defenders and Mexican attackers are strewn over the Alamo. The film then flashes back to a year earlier. Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid) attends a party where he tries to persuade people to migrate to Texas. He meets with David Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton), recently defeated for reelection to Congress. Houston explains to Crockett that as an immigrant to Texas, Crockett will receive 640 acres (2.6 km2) [a square mile] of his own choosing. Crockett asks with a grin whether this new republic is going to need a president.
Meanwhile, in San Felipe, Texas, the Texas provisional government is meeting to discuss what course of action to take after the recent capture of the Alamo and Bexar from Mexican forces at the first Battle of San Antonio de Bexar. Texas having rebelled against Mexico and its presidential dictator Santa Anna, who is personally leading an army to retake the Alamo, the War Party calls for the Texas army to depart Bexar, cross into Mexico and confront Mexican forces at the town of Matamoros. The Opposition Party seeks to rebuild the Texan army and establish a permanent government to be recognized by other nations of the world. Sam Houston is voted out as commander of the Texas army. While having drinks with Jim Bowie later, the disgusted Houston tells Bowie to go to San Antonio and destroy the Alamo.
William Barret Travis (Patrick Wilson) is also in San Felipe, reporting for duty. His character is quickly established as a man who seeks respect as a uniformed military officer, a lieutenant colonel in the Texas Army. Interlaced scenes show him granting his wife a divorce (for his adultery, abandonment, and "barbarous treatment"), and seeking a second chance in Texas. He is sent to take command of the Alamo, where he meets Col. James Neil, who informs him that he'll be in charge of the Texas Army regulars while Neil is away on leave. Travis, alarmed that the Alamo's small force cannot withstand the advancing Mexican Army, asks for reinforcements. Small groups of reinforcements arrive, but not enough for the impending battle. Travis oversees preparations for defense against inevitable attack, in hopes that enough reinforcements will arrive.
Crockett arrives in San Antonio, where he tells a crowd, "I told them folks they can go to hell, I'm going to Texas". After he is told that the other defenders are impatient for Santa Anna to arrive now that Crockett is on hand, Crockett replies, "I understood the fighting was over...Ain't it?" For the first time in any Alamo or Davy Crockett film, the viewer is shown the political side of Crockett and possibly his real intentions for traveling to Texas: not so much to fight for freedom, but for new opportunities. The movie implies that he's caught in the middle and cannot escape.
Santa Anna soon arrives in San Antonio, much to the surprise of the Texan fighters, who were not expecting the Mexican Army to arrive until late March or early April. The Texans retire to the Alamo compound despite its vulnerability. Amid the chaos Travis writes letters asking for reinforcements. Only a couple dozen men arrive to join them.
The siege has begun. Bowie leaves the Alamo to meet with Mexican General Manuel Castrillón to talk things out before they get out of hand. However, a perturbed Travis fires the 18-pound cannon on the south-west wall, thus cutting short Bowie's impromptu attempt at diplomacy and virtually ending any chance for avoiding the battle. Bowie notifies Travis that the Santa Anna has offered surrender at discretion. Travis offers all within the opportunity to leave. Almost to a man the defenders decide to stay and fight to the end. At least one woman remains, Mrs. Dickinson, whose husband, Lt. Almeron Dickinson, has decided to stay.
For the next several nights, the Mexican Army band serenades the Texans inside the Alamo with the "Degüello" (slit throat), followed by an artillery bombardment of the surroundeded compound. Satisfied that the Texans will not leave the Alamo, the Mexicans raise a red flag as a signal of "no quarter". The flag is visible also to the Alamo's defenders, who know its meaning.
The inevitable attack begins in the darkness before dawn with bugle calls along the Mexican front line. The Texans are awakened by the sound of the bugles signaling for the troops to attack. They were also woke up by the sound of Mexicans screaming "Viva Santa-Anna!!" After a long and brutal battle, the Mexicans, despite taking heavy casualties, breach the north wall of the mission, and Travis is killed when he is shot in the head by a young Mexican soldier among others storming the north wall. While a smaller group of Mexican engineers, armed with axes and crowbars, assault and break down the boarded-up doors and windows of the west wall, a smaller group storms the southwest wall, forcing the few surviving Texans to fall back to the buildings where they are all killed. Bowie is discovered in his room as rooms are broken into, and stabbed after he fires off his pistols, killing soldiers and attempts to use his knife. Crockett is taken prisoner, promising to take Santa Anna to Houston for the Mexican Army to surrender and maybe survive, but Santa Anna refuses the mocking offer and orders Crockett to be executed.
A few days later, after hearing about the fall of the Alamo, Houston orders his small army to retreat eastward, pursued by Santa Anna, leading the bulk of the Mexican Army. A few weeks later, Houston halts his retreat near the San Jacinto River area, where he decides to face the Mexicans in a final last stand. After a few days of tense stalemate, Houston attacks the Mexican army in a daring daytime attack. With the support of two cannons and a small group of mounted Tejanos, Houston leads the Texans in a surprise attack against the Mexican camp in which, caught off guard, the Mexicans are routed after a short battle, with many killed or wounded, at a cost of only a handful of Texans. Houston is wounded in the leg by a musket ball.
Santa Anna escapes, but is captured the following day by a Texian patrol, his identity given away when Mexican prisoners respond to his presence. Santa Anna surrenders to the wounded Houston, in exchange for his life, agreeing to order all surviving Mexican troops to withdraw from Texas and accept Texan independence.
Cast
Production
The film was originally conceived by Imagine Entertainment, with Ron Howard in the director's chair and partner Brian Grazer as producer. Russell Crowe was originally cast as Sam Houston, Ethan Hawke as William Barret Travis and Billy Bob Thornton as David Crockett. But there were financial and creative disagreements between Imagine and Disney, particularly with Howard wanting a $200 million budget.[citation needed] Disney rejected Imagine's proposals, and Crowe and Hawke left the project. Disney opted for director John Lee Hancock and a budget between $95–107 million. Thornton remained with the project as Crockett, while Howard and Grazer were credited as producers.
The exterior scenes of the film were shot in Texas, between January and June 2003, mostly on Reimers Ranch, near Austin. The film's art direction focused on historical accuracy and verisimilitude; for instance, the mission's chapel facade is not topped with the iconic "hump", an architectural detail added during a restoration years after the battle.[citation needed]
The film was shot in 2003 and scheduled for release in December of that year, but was rescheduled for release in April 2004.
Historical accuracy
Crockett's fate
The depiction of Crockett's fate came from memoirs written by former Mexican officer José Enrique de la Peña, an officer in Santa Anna's army who fought in the battle. It was the first to show Crockett executed as a prisoner of war; all others had depicted his death as occurring during the battle. This sparked criticism from many Alamo enthusiasts and some historians.[1]
The Alamo set
Hancock's version was purported to be the most accurate of all the Alamo films, but various interpretive liberties were taken, such as building the movie-set version of the Alamo chapel facade forward 30 to 40 feet (12 m) more than the extant (and presumably historically correct) structure.[citation needed] According to one of the DVD version's special features, Hancock did this to show the Alamo chapel and interior of the fort all in one shot. It is the largest and most expensive set ever built in North America. It comes in at 51 acres.
Jim Bowie's knife
Bowie's knife is ornate and extremely large, qualifying as a shortsword by some standards. It has a wood handle, and the blade is further supported by a brass backing extending about two-thirds from the 4-inch-long crossguard to the tip. The blade is about 3 inches at its widest.
Miscellaneous
When Crockett first plays his fiddle to the crowd, the song is "Listen to the Mockingbird", not composed until 1855, 19 years after the fall of the Alamo. The Three Stooges later on used it as their theme song. [2] The film shows Sam Houston paying for a drink with a coin carrying Santa Anna's portrait. Mexican silver coins of that era showed a liberty cap. Aside from the short-lived empire of Maximilian (1864–67), human representations on circulating Mexican coins between 1824 to 1905 were allegorical.[citation needed]
Battle scenes
A second "cattle call" for extras was held because too few thin and gaunt Mexican soldiers were available in the first call.[citation needed] (In the winter of 1835-1836, when the Mexican Army was moving northward through desert areas shortly before crossing the Rio Bravo (Rio Grande River) into Texas, it endured a snowstorm of uncommon intensity, and hundreds of Mexican soldiers had suffered more than their usual illness and hunger.) The film's main scenes of the Mexican attack on the Alamo were done under harsh weather conditions: battle-scene extras stood for hours in cold rain, making some scenes gruelingly realistic.
Houston and Crockett discuss Texas
 |
Sam Houston and Davy Crockett knew each other from their political activities in the capital, particularly from their respective terms as members of Congress. Crockett had recently lost his bid for a fourth term in the U.S. House of Representatives. Houston took advantage of the situation by encouraging Crockett to come to Texas. A ballroom in Washington D.C. served as the location of a critical meeting between the two. More than a $1 million (US) was spent on a collection of English-made Western European (hence also American) costumes representative of the period circa 1825-1835. The costumes included scores of women's and men's formal outfits: myriad formal dance gowns; women's undergarments, such as multi-skirt multi-tier petticoats and laced corsets; laced shoes and pumps for women of various ages; men's jackets, coats, capes, vests, shoes, and boots. Hairstyles and wigs for both women and men were historically accurate for the year 1835, the date of ballroom scenes. Other historically correct details for women's hairdos included tiaras of starched lace and polished bone, hairpins with elaborate decorative heads, lace and silk bows, and snoods. Men's hair styles were perhaps even more varied, ranging from closely clipped, chopped, or wavy; disheveled, long loose, or bobbed at the nape; and showing various stages of baldness with hairpieces such as horseshoe shaped to displaying gray curls at the sides and rear; and beards of many types.
Reception
According to Rotten Tomatoes, 108 of 154 reviews were "rotten", with two-thirds of its "top critics" making that same assessment.[3] Variety called it a "a historically credible but overly prosaic account of the most celebrated episode in the creation of an Americanized Texas."[4]
The Houston Chronicle gave the film a grade of "B", saying Hancock, who the paper points out is a "former Houstonian", "shows respect if not reverence for his state's mythical heritage, even while viewing it from modern perspectives"; it notes the "build-up to battle is prolonged and talky, and for a classic tale of heroic defiance, this Alamo feels more restrained than rousing. Again, it's no-win. When Hancock supplies history, the action and drama bog down. And even when he's right, he's wrong, since so many historians disagree about what happened at the site in what is now downtown San Antonio."[5] Entertainment Weekly gave it a "C+", saying "Hancock's moderate, apolitical, war-is-hell dramatization of the famous 1836 battle that shaped the future of a free and independent American Texas isn't nearly the flop that the exceptionally harsh and unavoidable advance chatter has suggested it is. (It's not the jingoistic call to patriotism of John Wayne's 1960 version, either.) But The Alamo never harmonizes into a cinematic experience any more resonant than the average, manly, why-we-fight pic, or coalesces into a stirring cry for freedom."[6] According to Roger Ebert, "Conventional wisdom in Hollywood is that any movie named The Alamo must be simplistic and rousing, despite the fact that we already know all the defenders got killed. (If we don't know it, we find out in the first scene.) Here is a movie that captures the loneliness and dread of men waiting for two weeks for what they expect to be certain death, and it somehow succeeds in taking those pop-culture brand names like Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie and giving them human form."[7]
The film was highly unsuccessful at the box office. In its first weekend, it was beat by a resurgent The Passion of the Christ, earning only US$9.1 million in its first weekend. By its second month of release, the film had yet to reach $30 million in domestic earnings. It ended its theatrical run with a worldwide gross of slightly less than $26 million. With a loss of more than $130 million, "The Alamo" became one of the biggest box office bombs of all time.[8]
See also
References
- ^ http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/34178/alamo-dvd/
- ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318974/goofs
- ^ The Alamo at Rotten Tomatoes
- ^ "New U.S. Release: The Alamo". Variety. Retrieved 2011-03-22.
- ^ "The Alamo". Houston Chronicle. May 28, 2004. Retrieved 2011-03-22.
- ^ "The Alamo". Entertainment Weekly. April 7, 2004. Retrieved 2011-03-22.
- ^ Roger Ebert (April 9, 2004). "The Alamo". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2011-03-22.
- ^ "The Alamo (2004)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2008-06-19.
External links
- The Alamo at IMDb
- The Alamo at AllMovie
- The Alamo at Box Office Mojo
- Alamo Sentry : Popular Culture of The Alamo
- View of movie set from Google Maps