Ray Pride

Action great Sam Fuller described a film as "like a battleground."

In a cocktail-party scene in Jean-Luc Godard's "Pierrot le Fou" (1965), the veteran director waves his cigar, declaring that cinema has "love, hate, action, violence, death--in one word, emotions."

"The Alamo" is a battleground, but I don't know if it's bloodier in front of or behind the camera. The current incarnation began as a dream project for Ron Howard: an epic three-hour awards grab, pushing the "R" rating for a war movie farther than "Saving Private Ryan." If it bleeds, such logic seems to go, it's authentic. Splatter and slaughter can be "meaningful." But Disney reportedly had cold feet at a $135 million price tag for a movie populated almost entirely by male characters with the less-profitable, more prohibitive "R" rating, and passed. Howard decamped and made the bitter "R"-rated "The Missing," and Disney set their Christmas 2003 release as a "PG-13" entry directed by John Lee Hancock, a screenwriter whose "The Rookie" was a surprise $100-million-plus success for the studio.

Christmas passed. So many stories, the official line went, tough for a new director to keep them coherent: Hancock needs more time to edit. Several versions were tested, and the one opening this weekend probably cost Disney as much (if not more) than the original version would have, and even at only a little more than two hours running time (minus the end credits) it's a creepy, creaky, erratic, weirdly dull movie.

Patrick Wilson's Colonel Travis is of a piece with his eyelash-fluttering role in "Angels in America," and there's similar cartoonish casting with Billy Bob Thornton's Davey Crockett who, at least, has mastered a kind of bashful narcissism that's an awful lot of fun to watch even when the point of a scene is muddied. His pained, understated drawl can channel some of the ghost of history. (Still, his reputed fear of antique furniture ought to have served him better.)

Within five minutes, despite the efforts of talent like cinematographer Dean Semler ("Dances with Wolves") and composer Carter Burwell ("Fargo") whose ragtag score hardly registers, the movie feels doomed. For me, the fear of this second-rate costume pageant set in with the first glimpse of Dennis Quaid's General Sam Houston, in a tri-corner hat with muttonchops and a little Detroit love patch on his lower lip.

Back to Fuller: Where's the emotion? The fiduciary responsibility to stockholders, to maximize the return on a flawed product, that's on screen. Sentimental flummery, too, with much chat about the freedom-loving "Texians." The territorial instinct is strong, we all know, even before watching a story like this one. We bring that into the darkness with us. Land and blood drive men to mayhem and madness. The Alamo means something to both Texans and Mexicans, that's a given. (For others, the mind may wander, separating the darks from the lights, wondering if the couch ought to be closer to the windows.)

But Hancock and his collaborators don't bring any consistently coherent perspective to the historical record. And the dialogue veers from the Bond-villain stuff given to Emilio Echevarria's Mexican General Santa Ana to Houston's drunkenly rasped, "I called you a Scottish catamite! One step down from an associate pederast!" Characters mutter under their breath at each other: "Drunken Hottentot!" "Two-bit dandy!" It's painful. Exposition is often doled on with a spade: "The Alamo was built by yak-yak-yak, ten years later, yak-yak-yak." "The Alamo" is such a listless diorama, it might even peeve the battle re-enactors down San Antonio way.

However loud and contradictory Jerry Bruckheimer's productions may be, there's emotion and passion in his overpriced entertainments. The battle scenes have a few spatially pleasing establishing shots from a distance, but once the fray begins, the editing is frazzled, never dazzling.

Still, metaphorical weight comes from outside the movie, from today's large-type headlines. Is there something in the zeitgeist that compels a portrait of being surrounded and going down to bloody, proud defeat in defense of homeland and principle? To inspire the next rank of soldiers to greater things?

It's not an attractive metaphor in the historical instant, but an eye-opening one. The Alamo? How about "Fallujah"? "Dying for nothing means shit to me," Jason Patrick's Jim Bowie gets to say at one point, and it's among the handful of rich moments. (The scene where Billy Bob explains why he don't eat "taters" anymore belongs in a better movie, where its punchline would ache rather than prompt snickers.)

Forget "The Alamo."

"The Alamo" opens Friday.

(2004-04-09)

Also by Ray Pride

Parton me
There are only a half-dozen Dollys in the house competing for a $100 prize, but the crowd at Estrojam's Dolly Parton Tribute at Martyr's on Thursday is packed with Dolly lovers
(2004-03-31)

Ordinary people
Writer-director Nir Bergman'a debut feature is political for its omissions, dealing with how a family reconstitutes itself after a sudden, senseless death without pretending to be part of the daily strife and struggle of the Middle East.
(2004-03-31)

Short Runs
This week's limited screenings
(2004-03-31)

Tip of the Week
A remarkable range of nonfiction work from around the world
(2004-03-30)

Tip of the Week
(2004-03-25)

Chatty Bob
(2004-03-25)

Short Runs
(2004-03-25)

Tip of the Week
(2004-03-18)

Eraser heads
(2004-03-18)

Short Runs
(2004-03-18)

Going with the grain
(2004-03-10)

Short Runs
(2004-03-10)

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