Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
The legendary true story of a small band of soldiers who sacrificed their lives in hopeless combat against a massive army in order to prevent a tyrant from smashing the new Republic of Texas.
John Wayne's epic retelling of the Battle of the Alamo is a sweeping, handsomely mounted historical Western. William Clothier's widescreen cinematography is genuinely exceptional — the vast Texan landscapes, the massive set construction, and the climactic battle sequence are visually spectacular and remain impressive. The plot is straightforward historical pageantry, earnest but overlong and occasionally preachy with its patriotic speechifying. The acting is serviceable with Wayne, Richard Widmark, and Laurence Harvey giving solid if uneven performances — Wayne's Davy Crockett is charismatic but Wayne-ish rather than transformative. The film's novelty is modest; it's a prestige epic in the tradition of the era, distinctive in scale but not especially singular in conception or voice. The ending — the fall of the Alamo and the sacrifice of the defenders — carries genuine emotional weight bolstered by the historical gravity of the event, though it plays out somewhat mechanically.