The Alamo 2004

     This is a historical drama about the 1835-36 Texas revolution and the siege of the Alamo.  The siege took place between February 23 – March 6, 1836.  Commanded by Colonel Travis, 183 American-born Texans and Tejanos (Mexican-born Texans) defend the Alamo from the Mexican army of General Santa Anna.  For the men at the Alamo there were long days and nights of waiting and wondering when the attack by General Santa Anna would start.  The focus of this film is the leaders and who they are as men.

     In the beginning of this film, I couldn’t seem to get interested and I wondered if the original version of 1960 was better?  I had a difficult time keeping track of what person the actors were portraying too.  Since this is historical, almost everyone already knows the ending before they start this film?  I was very surprised in one of the beginning scenes of the battle that the Alamo men didn’t have a guard on duty in the night?  There are a lot of details that I didn’t know previously too.  3* (This movie is OK) 

 

137 min, History directed by John Lee Hancock with Dennis Quaid, Billy Bob Thornton, Jason Patric, Patrick Wilson, Emilio Echevarria, Jordi Molla, Leon Rippy, Tom Davidson, Marc Blucas, Robert Prentiss, Kevin Page, Joe Stevens.

Note:  Imdb 6.0 out of 10, 29% critic 45% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert 3 ½*, Amazon 4.4* out of 5* with 431 reviews, Metacritic 47 out of 100 with 38 critics 6.3 out of 20 with 16 reviews.

Special Note:  There is another film with the same title and subject from 1960.  One of the fighters stuffed a bag of Doritos in his costume before he went out to be filmed.  He was killed and the bag popped out.  This scene had to be re-shot and later everyone had to be checked before the scenes.  Several people used as Texan extras were actual descendants of the defenders of the Alamo.  The cost of this film was over $140 million with marketing expenses added.  The worldwide gross was slightly more than $25.8 million making this one of the biggest box office bombs in film history!!  The size of the set was 51 acres and very expensive to be built.