A Ultima Barricada

Made in spite by Yates, well shot and mounted, replete with an excellent cast, 'The Last Command' still remains good value even if it rather pales besides Wayne's grandiose epic of just a few years later. The much underrated Hayden is superb as "big Jim Bowie" and Hunnicutt equally as good as Davy Crockett. Hayden has the ability to appear gentle, naive, rugged and brusque all at once - something few other actors, with perhaps the exception of Spencer Tracy, managed. Unfortunately Crockett and his 29 men don't appear until some way in. With only Hayden's latent dynamism really keeping things afloat, the first half an hour of the film is rather talkative in exposition, and it drags somewhat. Consuela de Quesada (Anna Marie Alberghetti) is a limp romantic foil to Bowie - I for one would be happy to have seen her written out and the structure tightened through her absence. Ernest Borgnine plays his small role with gusto - his confrontation with Bowie a standout scene in a film full of fighting, although his later genial acceptance of Bowie's superiority as a man is perhaps emphasised by the script too much for comfort.

Steiner's music (and especially the superb title song) goes a long way in making events move smoothly towards the climax. For it's the Alamo Battle the bums on seats will have come to see, and here it is done well (although again not *as* well as Wayne would manage with considerable more time and resources later (although any comparison isn't too much to the present film's detriment).

In short this is well worth seeing, and it provides a contemporarily staged contrast to the better-known epic which was to follow. I'd still like to see an historically accurate account of the events at the mission, though...

This is a version of the Alamo story often overlooked mainly because it focuses on Jim Bowie as opposed to Davy Crockett as the central character. Sterling Hayden in one of the many roles he truly hated before escaping to the seas is a stalwart and heroic Bowie.

As I said though in another review of a film with Bowie as the central character, Jim Bowie was anything but heroic. He was a land swindler, slave dealer, no good con man who very few people had anything nice to say about. He was a tough guy though, no question about that and the famous Bowie knife was made to his specifications.

Bowie was married into the Mexican aristocracy and did suffer the horrible tragedy of having his wife and children taken in an epidemic of the plague. We never see them here or in the John Wayne film or in the new Disney epic.

Possibly the best acting honors do go to Arthur Hunnicutt who was more the backwoods character that Davy Crockett was then John Wayne. Billy Bob Thornton in the 2004 Alamo was probably the best Davy Crockett ever put on film and the most accurate.

Probably too much is now known for the general public to appreciate a film like The Last Command. The principals at the Alamo were three dimensional characters and not the cardboard cutouts they are here.

While not totally historically accurate, this film is at least as accurate, if not more so, than most of the other Alamo epics. There are points in all the films that are arguable, if not totally wrong. However, I have researched most of the Alamo films and find this one more accurate from the viewpoint of the depiction of the Mexicans in the Alamo and some of the more personal facts about Bowie. For example, the death of his wife sometime before the start of the battle. No Alamo film is totally accurate, including the newly made Alamo with Billy Bob Thornton and Dennis Quaid. The important thing is that this is the story of brave men fighting a battle they cannot win against a far larger army. The spirit of the story is the important thing in this case.

I always liked this Alamo epic better than Wayne's because it moved faster and Sterling Hayden and Arthur Hunnicutt looked like Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett might have been. Hunnicutt's death scene influenced Wayne's in his epic but I'll rate Hunnicutt's an A+ for less "operatic" posing and a more real "I'll take you to hell with me realism. The teeny bopper love angle could've of been dropped though.

Forget any adherence to historical facts, directed by Frank Lloyd and with a Warren Duff screenplay, The Last Command is a slow moving piece that uses Jim Bowie as its focal point. Starring Sterling Hayden (Bowie), Richard Carlson (William Travers), Arthur Hunnicutt (Davy Crockett), Ernest Borgnine (Mike Radin), J. Carrol Naish (Santa Ana), and Anna Maria Alberghetti (Consuela), the piece was a project long courted by John Wayne. However, Republic refused to sanction the type of budget the Duke wanted for his vision. So after offering him a nominal fee for a part, he refused and Republic promptly went on to make the film anyway. The final result is an interesting film that finally pays off for those having the patience and tolerance for patriotic flag waving.

The story follows the battle of the Alamo in San Antonio in 1836, where brave Texans gave their life to become free of the Mexican rule, by defending the former mission station against overwhelming odds as the Mexican army of Santa Ana closed in for victory. The final battle is very well staged by Lloyd, and the acting, though not making the earth move, is very competent, particularly Hayden who does a nice line in tortured ruggedness. Max Steiner provides a zippy score and the low budget use of Trucolor doesn't affect the work of cinematographer Jack Marta. Safe and enjoyable as a story telling piece, if ultimately far from being a rousing spectacle fit for that particular part in history. 6/10