Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk Review
Director Ang Lee is one of the few directors out there who can seemingly handle every genre. He’s done the period piece with Sense and Sensibility (1995), the martial-arts epic with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), the superhero film with Hulk (2003), the Oscar-friendly drama twice with The Ice Storm (1997) and Brokeback Mountain (2005), and the adventure epic with Life of Pi (2012), and now he has Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, and its sort of a drama, but also sort of a comedy, with a touch of a war film, but it isn’t quite the epic that Life of Pi was. He does, however, still have a film that manages to entertain with some strong performances and some nice camerawork.
The story is that of Billy Lynn, a private in the Iraq war who is nationally recognized for bravely running out into the middle of a war zone to try and save his fallen sergeant. He returns home with his troop and are set to perform alongside Destiny’s Child in the halftime entertainment of a Dallas Cowboys football game. However, he is having a hard time adjusting to his new life following all the recognition and fame he’s achieved, plus getting back into touch with his family. Newcomer Joe Alwyn plays Billy Lynn, and he gives a great performance. While I enjoyed his performance, his character was not as enjoyable. See, we get to see everybody he knows and loves and usually we get to know a bit about them. However, we never really get a great sense of who Billy Lynn is. Sure, we get a bit of a backstory as far as why he joined the army, but that was just a story, not an example of what his personality is like, and when you look at the way the other characters were written, I can tell you a whole bunch of dynamic traits about Billy’s sister, the leader of his troop, his would-be girlfriend, and the other people he interacts with. Instead he just takes a backseat and watches everyone do interesting things around him.
Anyways, the whole cast is quite an impressive gathering. We have Kristen Stewart, Chris Tucker, Garrett Hedlund, Steve Martin, Vin Diesel, and Makenzie Leigh in the ensemble, and none of them give bad performances. Truly the standout, though, is Garrett Hedlund, who gets a few scenes where he gets to yell and tell it how it is to a few oblivious Texans, perhaps the best scene in the movie is one of these with Tim Blake Nelson playing an oil tyrant trying to tell the boys over dinner that that’s the only reason we’re in Iraq. Hmm, Hedlund’s character thinks for a moment, should I tell this guy off or just brush it off? Of course, we get to see him tell him off, and it is perhaps the best scene in the movie. I’ve never been entranced with any of his prior performances before, but this is one where I can now point to one and say, “he was excellent”. Also, I’m not a huge van of Vin Diesel, and sure he’s been decent in a few of the Fast and the Furious (2001-present) films and Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), and while he’s not a lead actor in this, he definitely gives his best performance to date. Plus it’s a rarity anymore to see Steve Martin, and while I thought he was just fine in the role, it was good to see him. Felt like it had been forever, and that’s a talented comedic man. Too bad he doesn’t get to show it here, though. And cinematographer John Toll is a talented man who improves the movie with his presence as DP. Lots of beautiful shots.
So yeah, I think the talented performances save the movie. The first big complaint I have is some weird choices Ang Lee made. First off, it’s important to note he went experimental with this and shot it in 120 FPS. Supposedly this is the equivalent the human eye sees, so this is supposed to be the most “realistic” film ever made. I didn’t get to see it this way, instead at the regular 24 FPS that’s become standard, but those who did see it in 120 have said it just looks awful. I don’t know, but this leads to a lot of extreme close-ups that linger for too longer. It might make some uncomfortable. Plus there’s this thing where every once in a while the color slips out and we go to black-and-white for a couple of shots while the candid truth comes out, then we go back to color and listen to what actually happens. It’s amusing at first, but then I think I saw the point: Billy’s kind of weird. One of these examples includes a press conference where a reporter asks what the soldiers do in their spare time, and their answers are, ahem, all involving masturbation, but then we go back and they say video games or working out. So yes, it’s humorous, but I failed to see any point to it. Lee does it maybe three or four times in the movie then we never see it again. Plus I am a fan of linear filmmaking, and don’t really like non-sequential editing unless the linear editing makes the film uninteresting or ruins a would-be plot point. Think Gone Girl (2014). You re-edit that to linear and the movie loses all its magic. However, I got the sense that this was just shown in non-sequential for no good reason, and thought we might have had more of a connection to Billy if we’d actually seen what he did first in full force instead of hearing about it and seeing it in low quality like it is in the film. So we begin and are supposed to feel all happy for him, but I’m like, “what did he do that makes him so decorated and celebrated?”. And one other comment: this makes the entire Dallas community, or at least the staff of the Cowboys security and all that look like assholes. I won’t spoil why but if you’ve seen the film, you know what I mean.
Wow, there’s more here to talk about than I thought initially. It’s not a bad movie and there’s some stuff to complain about, but some strong performances save the day and overall Ang Lee is a strong director, perhaps one of the top five or ten working in Hollywood today. Like that list I put out on the top of the article, we’ve seen that not every film he makes is decorated and appraised, and we shouldn’t expect that. Even Spielberg and Coppola and all them have a film every once in a while that’s not worth as much as the previous ones. So I’m gonna say that if you’re fascinated by the PTSD aspects of war movies, Billy Lynn does have a few offerings that will catch your eye, and if you like the cast you’ll enjoy seeing them work together. But otherwise, it’s one that might work best as a DVD rental.
My rating: 7/10
