It's a well-crafted, intelligent, no-nonsense western epic that zips us through the famous siege and the birth of Texas with style, verve and impressive historical accuracy.

It somehow succeeds in taking those pop-culture brand names like Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie and giving them human form.

Alamo buffs will be delighted, and everyone else will be treated to something that feels like Old Hollywood crossed with new sensibilities.

Thoughtful and complex.

Its egotistical, wishy-washy and otherwise flawed protagonists are no less heroic because they look -- and act -- like you and me. On the contrary, they are more so.

Politics aside, this is a handsome film with orange skies to die for, or under, and a lovely score by Carter Burwell. The picture has some ponderous and snooze-worthy stretches, but it attains a certain melancholic grandeur, with the actors and crew fighting as desperately as Crockett and Bowie to make the best of a fated adventure.

Thornton is excellent and now seems genetically incapable of being anything less than great in any role he takes.

Except for a handful of scenes, Hancock's film isn't good enough to be memorable. Neither is it bad enough to be entirely forgettable. It's just one of those compromised movies that makes one look forward to the director's cut.

The real struggle in The Alamo is between historic revisionism and Hollywood notions of sacrifice, and it's not much of a contest: Hollywood wins, as it did in John Wayne's sprawling, factually spurious 1960 film.

The result is something that feels very much like an overachieving made-for-TV movie--a history lesson dolled up like an action movie, with the action relegated to the final third, and even then, the battle is over before it really begins.

A respectable and at times an exciting film that should appeal to males of all ages, history buffs and -- yes, it's inevitable -- patriots.

Refreshingly revisionist in the sense that it takes a relatively clear-eyed view of the messy lives and equivocal circumstances of many of the key participants.

While the massacre is a wall-shaking and effective bit of high decibel drama, some of the movie's best moments come during the Texans' long brave wait for almost certain death.

Hancock's direction isn't flashy, and the pacing is a little curious...Still, he has the quiet chutzpah to suggest that a man can be both flawed and heroic, cowardly in his personal life and noble in his public one.