The Alamo Review

Only if a) you're in the mood for some big and bloody massacres, b) like your period pics very, very talky and c) happen to be a Yank, will the latest big-screen telling of the famous siege of the Alamo appeal.

A spectacular epic shot through with a revisionist zeal, director John Lee Hancock's movie is sombre from the off as a muddy messenger relays the death of all present at the famous fort in San Antonio, Texas.

Cue a flashback to the events preceding the suicidal stand and the formation of the small but plucky group of 200 men who held off thousands of Mexican soldiers for 13 days in the spring of 1836, a line up led by unpopular young officer Lt Col. William Travis (Patrick Wilson), hard-drinking old hand James Bowie (Jason Patric) and, of course, legendary hunter, American statesman and pioneer Davy Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton).

And while Hancock's mission to demystify the 'martyrs' of the Alamo may be admirable - Travis is an errant, pompous husband, Bowie an egotistical drunk and Crockett a battle-shy politician - so unsympathetic are the characters that you soon start not to care about the fate of the whole bickering lot of them.

Add to that an almost wilful refusal to actually explain the history behind the Texans' stand, a comic book baddie in Emilio Echevarria's moustache twirling Mexican General and a wearying coda depicting the Yanks' revenge and you'll be heading for the doors long before the film's 136 minutes are up.

Thornton's mischievous and sometimes genuinely touching depiction of Crockett promises more but not even he can save Hancock's bloody, brutal and boring film.