The Alamo (2004)
Film:
DVD:

Directed by Joshua S. Alper & Darryl C. Rehr
Narrated by Stacy Keach

Features:

• Remember the Alamo documentary, intro and conclusion with Dennis Quaid
  
• Two episodes of The Real West, "The Battle of the Alamo" and "The Texas Rangers"
  
• Biography episode: "Davy Crockett: American Frontier Legend"
  
• Remembe the Alamo behind-the-scenes featurette
  
• Timeline
  

Released by The History Channel
Rating: NR
Region: 1
Anamorphic: N/A; appears in its original 1.33:1 format.

My Advice: If you're a big follower of Texas history, rent it

America has always been big at the rallying cry. "Don't tread on me," the snake said, and if anybody did manage to step on the backs of Americans, well, nothing unites a country like somebody to get good and pissed at. The Maine, Pearl Harbor, 9/11--they're all tragedies of one sort or another that have been turned into tools to strengthen resolve. One that has gotten a lot of play is the Alamo. It's easy to see why it's reached the status of legend: Americans outnumbered, outgunned, fighting a losing battle with their main defense being their will power and their penchant to stand on principle. Ideals worth dying for--nothing grows a legend quite like this.

The legend is all well and good, but it makes it easy to forget that the legend was based on an actual event, and it makes the details of that event obscured and ill-defined. Personally, I had never delved into the history of the Alamo deep enough to get an inkling of some of the things the legend leaves out or glosses over. For example, the legend would have you think that it was Americans vs. Mexicans--when in fact, the Alamo was populated with mostly Mexicans, who had become Mexicans to get land. While some of the details aren't backed up with as much evidence as we would like, the program does a good job of at least getting the right questions into people's heads. It's not trying to ruin anybody's stories or revise history, but it's got its heart in the right place: it just wants to know what the hell actually happened.

While the main program described is Remember the Alamo, it's actually just the main program on this four-parter set. It's the strongest of the four, and I'm sure that The History Channel packaged this as "The Alamo" to capitalize on the film that was supposed to open this past December...a damn shame for them since it's been pushed back to this spring. Indeed, the Quaid opening and closing for the main program seems to be there just to tie the whole thing to the feature film.

The other programs are decent enough, but there's a great deal of overlap once you get to the subject matter at hand. The first two bonus programs are from the Kenny Rogers-hosted The Real West, one of which covers the Alamo, one the Texas Rangers in general. The Alamo episode presents a good number of the same talking heads as the main program, and there's not really anything new presented here. It's a bit superfluous. The Texas Rangers episode does a good job of explaining where these lawmen came from and how they had precedence back in the Old World. The last bonus program is an episode of Biography regarding Davy Crockett, which again was fascinating for someone like myself he only knows the surface of the guy's legend.

Other features are a timeline of the events and a featurette regarding the making of the main program. The best part of this is watching the crew salivate over the set from the feature film, which they got to use to make their own flick.

All in all, the set is fairly interesting, although the main program is the best of the lot and the one to watch if you're strapped for time. Alamo afficionados will probably know a great deal of the information already, but they might want to own it in an easily digestible form...otherwise everyone else with just a regular interest would be well served just to rent the thing.