Tear Jerker / The Alamo (2004)

• The brutal death of Mexican General Manuel Castrillon, especially since, throughout the film, he had tried to get Santa Anna to be more humane towards the rebels, even outright begging for him to spare Davy Crockett's life.
  • It was even worse in Real Life: while his death wasn't as brutal (the rebels just shot him), the Texian Secretary of War, Thomas Rusk, tried to save him, shouting for the rebels not to shoot Castrillon and even knocking aside a few rifles while attempting to reach him. Sadly, he was ignored, and a few rebels rode ahead of him and shot the general anyway. After the battle, Rusk made sure Castrillon got a decent burial.
• Crockett's death may be badass in it's balls and defiance, but there's no denying it's also this trope. Davy Crockett ("he prefers David") has been Deconstructing his own myth across the whole movie, and now he has to do the one thing he doesn't want to: become his legend, one more time. His whispered "Davy Crockett" is somewhere between a sob and a chuckle for a reason. He's a man that doesn't want to die, doesn't want to be a hero. But Davy Crockett just can't do that, so he goads and mocks Santa Anna, knowing it'll get him killed.
• There's a particular sadness in the treatment of the slave characters, men who have no stake in the fight, who were forced to be there because they're considered property. There's an underlying feeling that they're expected to fight with all the vigor and patriotism of the free Texian men alongside them. To the film's credit, Joe who was planning to surrender to the Mexicans was never portrayed as a coward, but still it's a depressing situation.
• While not shown in the film (thank God), the novel reveals what happened to that Mexican Child Soldier: during the battle of San Jacinto, he gets badly wounded and a rebel officer, shocked that such a young boy would be drafted into military service, tries to stop another rebel from killing him, only for the latter to give a bloodthirsty grin and butcher the poor kid with a knife while declaring "Remember the Alamo."

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