I think that when VHS and DVD became available, John Wayne's estate finally recouped the initial investment he laid out for the production of this film he believed in about one of our most tragic episodes in American history.

A whole lot of these people at The Alamo were southerners and slaveholders and a more politically correct version of the story would show that. But that doesn't take away from the fact that they were a brave bunch. And John Wayne doesn't do politically correct.

The original Alamo sitting in the middle of downtown San Antonio could hardly be used for a movie setting. Wayne had constructed a whole complete fort done to scale with a surrounding town of San Antonio De Bexar as it was known then. It's now a tourist attraction in Brackettsville, Texas.

In the tradition of Leslie Howard and Vivien Leigh, British players playing American southerners, Laurence Harvey was cast as the aristocratic William Barret Travis. The real Travis was quite the womanizer, he devoted almost as much time to that as to politics. He kept a diary detailing each of his feminine conquests. If a film was made with Travis as the central character, Harvey would have been perfect casting for that part, given some of the romantic heels he had played before and would be cast as again.

No character of the American frontier ever got as big a whitewash as Jim Bowie. The man was an absolute scoundrel, but he's a hero here and he certainly died as bravely as the rest of them at The Alamo. You can't say too much about the rest of his life though.

Richard Widmark who played Bowie was one of the few of Wayne's co-stars who did not get along with him. In order to get financing for the film, Wayne was told by the money people that he had to have another big name male co-star playing one of the main roles. It's no accident they did not work together again.

He was also told he had to play Davy Crocket, the Duke originally wanted to play Sam Houston who appears briefly in two scenes and he's played well by Richard Boone. Wayne wanted to concentrate on directing, but the money people forced his hand again.

Billy Bob Thornton who played Crockett in a recent version of The Alamo story probably was closer to the mark than John Wayne was. Still the portrayal Wayne gives rings true and Crockett of the three main characters at the Alamo was probably the best of them by far.

A recently restored version, the director's cut, fills quite a few gaps that the popular version released in 1960 had. Get that one by all means. Hank Worden has a touching death scene and Patrick Wayne's part is far more than in the version shown. In fact James Butler Bonham was quite the frontier character himself and a good film could be made of his life.

I was in San Antonio last year and saw The Alamo again, the first time being in 1971. Then as now tourists from around the world come to the place to see where a legend was born. And a legend that will be told and told as long as man walks on the earth.

Just for the record I like John Wayne and his films, I love The Searchers, The Quiet Man, El Dorado, The Shootist, Fort Apache and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and quite like Red River and Rio Bravo. The Alamo is not Wayne's worst movie, not even close, that dishonour to me is still The Conqueror, but again it's not among his best either.

Before I point out what I didn't like very much about The Alamo, I noticed several things I liked and admired. The Alamo is a beautifully made film with great colour, magnificent scenery and strong cinematography. Dmitri Tiomkin has penned some wonderful scores, such as It's a Wonderful Life, Red River and The High and the Mighty, and the score for The Alamo was no exception, with its melodious and rousing themes.

Some assets showed some good and bad things. One was the script, the second half in written quality is actually stirring stuff. I wish I could say the same for the first half, sadly I found it rather leaden. Another was the direction, in the second half it shows signs of brilliance however in the first it is somewhat self-indulgent with scenes going on too long. This paragraph especially applies to the cast. John Wayne is charismatic enough and does a better job at acting here I feel than directing and Richard Widmark once again gives a solid performance. One of the most disappointing things of this picture is the performance of Laurence Harvey, who's very stiff with an accent that is both inconsistent and obvious.

There are also some assets that didn't do much for me. In terms of story, the second half is much better than the first. The second half has some good writing and picks up the pace, the first half on the other hand is in my opinion unexciting and pedestrian with too many overlong scenes that could've been trimmed easily. The Alamo is perhaps 15 minutes too long, the pace is often dull particularly at the start and for a lengthy movie you'd expect more character development than this. Widmark's is probably the most well developed, Harvey's character is very awkward and perhaps even out of place throughout.

Overall, too uneven and just didn't engage me. 5/10 Bethany Cox

O.K., is historically inaccurate, too long, here and there rhetoric and verbose, and very, very patriotic. Bus is also sincere, often moving,and probably the film in which Wayne expresses his more strong convictions. ¿Conservative? Yes. ¿Repubican? Of course. ¿Fascist? Only if you are the obnoxious left wing guy who thinks that everyone who dissents with you is the cousin of Mussolini. A funny story: some years ago, I purchased a VHS of the film in Madrid, dubbed in Spanish, and discovered that in the famous scene of the "Republic speech" (Wayne to Laurence Harvey) the word "Republic" was replaced for "Independence". In the almost fascist Franco's Spain, republicans were the Bad Guys of the last Civil War. Interesting trivia. The final battle is obviously borrowed from the famous combat in the ice of "Alexander Nevsky" (1938),by Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. Both sequences show first shots of individual soldiers, then little groups, then long shots of all the enemy army, and the soundtrack combines various lines of the principal musical themes of the film. The question: mention two famous ukrainian musicians who studied together in San Petersburg in 1913, with professor Alexander Glazunov. The answer: Sergei Prokofiev (author of the music of "Nevsky") and Dmitri Tiomkin (idem for "The Alamo"). Tiomkin also was piano's teacher of Glazunov's daughter. I suspect that he and Wayne (or his second unit director Cliff Lyons) have "Nevsky" in mind when filmed the battle. Is obvious too that the Duke don't tell us the story of the Alamo, but his legend (the final chorus insist: "let the old men tell the story, let the legend grow and grow"),and conceived his film as his particular version of Homer's "Iliad". The conflict of leadership between Travis and Bowie it's inspired by the confrontation of Agamnenon and Achiless in the old poem, with Crockett (¿Ulysses?) in the middle. And in terms of American politics, there are a sub-plot in the film: Travis is the manipulative hamiltonian leader, Bowie a jacksonian populist figure, and Crockett a jeffersonian that accepts the decission of the majority. Politics and history aside, the film is a good epic, that grows in his splendid 45 final minutes. And Wayne plays fair with his enemies: the villain is the concept of dictatorship, not the mexicans (the only individual bad guy is an opportunist American). "Nevsky", indeed, painted the story in white and black, making his hero as a parable of Uncle Joe Stalin. ¿Who is the "reactionary" an who the "progressive"?