You just keep on drilling, sir, and we'll keep on killing.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

(2016)

(SPOILERS) The drubbing Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk received really wasn’t unfair. I can’t even offer it the “brave experiment” consolation on the basis of its use of a different frame rate – not evident in itself on 24fps Blu ray, but the neutering effect of the actual compositions is, and quite tellingly in places – since the material itself is so lacking. It’s yet another misguided (to be generous to its motives) War on Terror movie, and one that manages to be both formulaic and at times fatuous in its presentation.

The irony is that Ang Lee, who wanted Billy Lynn to feel immersive and realistic, has made a movie where nothing seems real. Jean-Christophe Castelli’s adaptation of Ben Fountain’s novel is careful to tread heavily on every war movie cliché it can muster – and Vietnam War movie cliché at that – as it follows Billy Lynn (British actor Joe Alwyn) and his unit (“Bravo Squad”) on a media blitz celebrating their heroism in 2004 Iraq (you can tell from period texting). Or more particularly Billy’s, in going to the aid of his stricken sergeant during a firefight. It just happened to be caught on camera, enabling a ready-made piece of rah-rah propaganda. Naturally, their feelings on this, and Billy’s in particularly, are somewhat more ambivalent than the “hail the conquering heroes” reception, and throughout the running time, which unfolds in and around a Dallas Cowboys Thanksgiving home game, we experience his explanatory flashbacks to war and home life.

Such a structural model is familiar yet solid enough, if used to engineer character or story revelations. Lee’s film does neither, though, charting an entirely predictable course and fuelled by a half-hearted tension over whether Billy will stick with his unit or, encouraged by his less-than-flag-waving sister (Kristin Stewart, who really does seem to have been dropped in from a Nam protest movie), make a dash for it under the legitimate claim of PTSD. Because the audience would see him as a coward, presumably, he sticks with them, which says as much about the kind of movie this is as anything (it’s all about brotherhood, and responsibility, it seems).

Very little lands resoundingly. Chris Tucker shows up in a motor-mouth promoter role, and if he looks like the kind of guy enjoying knowing he doesn’t need to work (all those Rush Hour profit share percentages), he hits an appealing note when the screenplay doesn’t feed him dumb things to enable the squad to relate their experiences (the same thing happens when the football team ask about guns and Tim Blake Nelson delivers a monologue on fracking).

Steve Martin’s the slippery, garrulous owner of the football team, basically there to be put in his place when they refuse his insultingly meagre offer for their movie rights. There’s a cheerleader (Mackenzie Leigh) for Billy to fall head over heels for because what would a movie be without a little romance, right? The events at the stadium unfold in a manner that occasionally diverts due to insulting manner in which they’re pushed into being puppets on a string (one wonders they all didn’t point blank refuse when it came to requested as stage props for Destiny’s Child – of which, did Lee really not think it wouldn’t be immensely distracting to do the old “they’re really here, but you aren’t going to see their faces because they aren’t actually” manoeuvre?), but mostly the devices grate, including predictable fights and the triggering of PTSD symptoms when there are sudden loud noises.

There might have been a way to make this material travel, but not with the script as is and Lee’s chosen approach, which highlights every hackneyed plot device. Billy himself is too good to be true, and it doesn’t help that Alwyn’s clearly been chosen because he has the face of an angel. An early sign is that, if he were given $100k, he’d pay his sister’s medical bills. Later, his incredibly indulgently parental superiors cut short his punishment detail to listen to his confessional of why he totalled one of their vehicles (it still doesn’t make much sense, other than that vehicles were involved in both incidents). He’s excruciatingly sincere, which makes him difficult to empathise with, which only goes to accentuate, with Lee angling to get up close and personal with every pore, how the whole becomes a failed endeavour. During interviews with Bravo Squad, Lee uses a device of Billy imagining his squad’s honest views contrasted with the approved response, but given how PG-13 his naughtiest thoughts are, it ends up looking faintly risible.

That’s the other thing about the movie; there’s never a sense of verisimilitude to this unit, other than that they all look like kids. The trauma of their experiences fails to translate in a claustrophobic or oppressive manner, and there’s too little combat to fill in the blanks. Vin Diesel is the sergeant who doesn’t make it back to the US alive, and he’s a ridiculous creation, as if Fountain and Castelli decided to weed out anything remotely realistic from the already decidedly symbolic and heightened Willem Dafoe character in Platoon. Diesel’s Shroom is a zen warrior, to the extent he quotes sage texts, tells each of his men he loves them before they go into the thick of it, and drops such nuggets as “If a bullet’s going to get you, it’s already been fired” and “Embrace your fear and let your training be your guide”.

The crucial incident in which Billy goes to Shroom’s aid and ends up fighting for his life against an insurgent, even reduced from its original 120 fps form, looks like it was shot on cheap video, like a home-made dramatisation badly edited and promptly posted on YouTube. Lee wants immediacy but he only succeeds in making the sequence appear amateur.

Hedlund’s pretty good as the Staff Sergeant Dime, though, surprisingly well cast in the mentor role and convincing as their leader and peer, but he’s better than the material. Alwyn’s clearly giving it his all, so it’s mainly Lee’s doing that he doesn’t come out of it with much credit. It’s particular vexing that Lee’s movie has the temerity to make us feel Billy’s doing the right thing by going back with his squad, over and above any other thought process (such as: none of them are doing the right thing).

Other Lee movies have managed to turn unlikely fare into big successes (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain) and his previous experiments with technology have been at least impressive, whatever you thought of the finished product (Hulk, The Life of Pi). Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is simply a dud, even without the jiggery-pokery frame rate to decry. After both Peter Jackson and Ang Lee crashing and burning with this new big thing, what are the chances Jimbo Cameron can come good? To be honest, even if the portents are against the Avatars, I wouldn’t bet against him.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

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You guys sure like watermelon.

The Irishman aka I Heard You Paint Houses (2019)
(SPOILERS) Perhaps, if Martin Scorsese hadn’t been so opposed to the idea of Marvel movies constituting cinema, The Irishman would have been a better film. It’s a decent film, assuredly. A respectable film, definitely. But it’s very far from being classic. And a significant part of that is down to the usually assured director fumbling the execution. Or rather, the realisation. I don’t know what kind of crazy pills the ranks of revered critics have been taking so as to recite as one the mantra that you quickly get used to the de-aging effects so intrinsic to its telling – as Empire magazine put it, “you soon… fuggadaboutit” – but you don’t. There was no point during The Irishman that I was other than entirely, regrettably conscious that a 75-year-old man was playing the title character. Except when he was playing a 75-year-old man.

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Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

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Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

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Casino Royale (2006)
(SPOILERS) Despite the doubts and trepidation from devotees (too blonde, uncouth etc.) that greeted Daniel Craig’s casting as Bond, and the highly cynical and low-inspiration route taken by Eon in looking to Jason Bourne's example to reboot a series that had reached a nadir with Die Another Day, Casino Royale ends up getting an enormous amount right. If anything, its failure is that it doesn’t push far enough, so successful is it in disarming itself of the overblown set pieces and perfunctory plotting that characterise the series (even at its best), elements that would resurge with unabated gusto in subsequent Craig excursions.

For the majority of its first two hours, Casino Royale is top-flight entertainment, with returning director Martin Campbell managing to exceed his excellent work reformatting Bond for the ‘90s. That the weakest sequence (still good, mind) prior to the finale is a traditional “big” (but not too big) action set piece involving an attempt to…

You're skipping Christmas! Isn't that against the law?

Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
Ex-coke dealer Tim Allen’s underwhelming box office career is, like Vince Vaughn’s, regularly in need of a boost from an indiscriminate public willing to see any old turkey posing as a prize Christmas comedy. He made three Santa Clauses, and here is joined by Jamie Lee Curtis as a couple planning to forgo the usual neighbourhood festivities for a cruise.

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Knives Out (2019)
(SPOILERS) “If Agatha Christie were writing today, she’d have a character who’s an Internet troll.” There’s a slew of ifs and buts in that assertion, but it tells you a lot about where Rian Johnson is coming from with Knives Out. As in, Christie might – I mean, who can really say? – but it’s fair to suggest she wouldn’t be angling her material the way Johnson does, who for all his pronouncement that “This isn’t a message movie” is very clearly making one. He probably warrants a hesitant pass on that statement, though, to the extent that Knives Out’s commentary doesn’t ultimately overpower the whodunnit side of the plot. On the other hand, when Daniel Craig’s eccentrically accented sleuth Benoit Blanc is asked “You’re not much of a detective, are you?” the only fair response is vigorous agreement.

It's their place, Mac. They have a right to make of it what they can. Besides, you can't eat scenery!

Local Hero (1983)
(SPOILERS) With the space of thirty-five years, Bill Forsyth’s gentle eco-parable feels more seductive than ever. Whimsical is a word often applied to Local Hero, but one shouldn’t mistake that description for its being soft in the head, excessively sentimental or nostalgic. Tonally, in terms of painting a Scottish idyll where the locals are no slouches in the face of more cultured foreigners, the film hearkens to both Powell and Pressburger (I Know Where I’m Going!) and Ealing (Whisky Galore!), but it is very much its own beast.

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Last Action Hero (1993)
(SPOILERS) Make no mistake, Last Action Hero is a mess. But even as a mess, it might be more interesting than any other movie Arnie made during that decade, perhaps even in his entire career. Hellzapoppin’ (after the 1941 picture, itself based on a Broadway revue) has virtually become an adjective to describe films that comment upon their own artifice, break the fourth wall, and generally disrespect the convention of suspending disbelief in the fictions we see parading across the screen. It was fairly audacious, some would say foolish, of Arnie to attempt something of that nature at this point in his career, which was at its peak, rather than playing it safe. That he stumbled profoundly, emphatically so since he went up against the behemoth that is Jurassic Park (slotted in after the fact to open first), should not blind one to the considerable merits of his ultimate, and final, really, attempt to experiment with the limits of his screen persona.

Of course, one m…

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Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

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Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
(SPOILERS) When I wrote my 23 to see in 2019, I speculated that James Cameron might be purposefully giving his hand-me-downs to lesser talents because he hubristically didn’t want anyone making a movie that was within a spit of the proficiency we’ve come to expect from him. Certainly, Robert Rodriguez and Tim Miller are leagues beneath Kathryn Bigelow, Jimbo’s former spouse and director of his Strange Days screenplay. Miller’s no slouch when it comes to action – which is what these movies are all about, let’s face it – but neither is he a craftsman, so all those reviews attesting that Terminator: Dark Fate is the best in the franchise since Terminator 2: Judgment Day may be right, but there’s a considerable gulf between the first sequel (which I’m not that big a fan of) and this retcon sequel to that sequel.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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