[projekktor id=’26127′]
In the third act of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, the American satire-by-way-of Iraq War drama from director Ang Lee, there is a stunning sequence in which our titular soldier and his company are drawn into the halftime show of a Thanksgiving NFL football game and are literally co-opted and consumed by the country they serve. It’s a fabulous piece of filmmaking in which the young soldiers, on leave from a heroic campaign in Iraq, suddenly realize that their story and their very identities, belong to a greater American mythos than to themselves. The rest of Lee’s film revolves around this sequence, leaping through time and space to tell the broader story of young Billy Lynn and his time before, during and after his tour in Iraq. While this marquee scene is well worth the price of admission, the film as a whole is let down by a screenplay unsure whether it’s satirizing American war culture or celebrating it, and much touted technical innovations which end up being more distracting than dazzling.
The Iraq War has been so thoroughly explored on screen already that it’s understandable if you greet another film centred on the conflict with a disinterested shrug. From The Hurt Locker to American Sniper to Kill The Messenger, we’ve reached a saturation point in a little over a decade. Nevertheless Ang Lee, adapting the novel by Ben Fountain, manages to give us an angle we haven’t quite seen before. The film is largely split between a pair of days: one, the final day of a nationwide Victory Tour for the members of Bravo squad culminating in the aforementioned football game; the other, the reason for that tour, a brief but intense battle caught on tape by a news cameras in Iraq.
The hero of that battle is Billy Lynn – played with a quiet confidence by newcomer Joe Alwyn. Billy is a smart kid, favoured by his razor-tongued commanding officer Dime (Garrett Hedlund) and his philosophizing sergeant Shroom (Vin Diesel). He’s also clearly the favourite of his family, a reason given by his sister Kathryn (Kristen Stewart) as to why he should abandon the army and return home. Though he scoffs at the idea at first, Billy finds it more appealing as he grows increasingly disenchanted by how he and his squad mates are treated on the home front. From the movie producer (Chris Tucker) promising riches if the boys sell the rights to their story, to the NFL owner (Steve Martin) happy to pay lip-service to the soldiers but unwilling to pony up the cash, to the sultry Cowboys cheerleader (Makenzie Leigh) who throws herself at Billy but backtracks when he expresses hesitation over returning to the front, each person Billy meets on his journey is more interested in being a part of the story than they are in understanding the soldier’s experience.
The same feels true for the film. When it’s focused on the blood-sucking characters on home soil, it is a sharp and stinging critique of the American propaganda machine. However when it jumps backwards into Iraq things feel flat. Perhaps it’s the much touted ultra-high frame rate which was supposed to put us in the soldiers boots but instead feels like a disorienting, over-saturated mess. Or maybe’s it’s the film’s dreamy sequences in which a sage-like Vin Diesel quotes Hindu texts to a wide-eyed Billy. Whatever it is, there’s far more authenticity when the film is dealing with fakers in America, than there is when it’s showing us the gritty truth of war in Iraq.
Despite its flaws however Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk does deliver many achievements worth lauding. The dialogue and performances from the soldiers of Bravo company feels authentic (especially the fact that they seem so damn young), Tim Squyres’ editing work does an impressive job of connecting emotional triggers and their traumatic sources, Joe Alwyn gives a subtle breakout performance, and the half-time scene is one of the most jarring sequences put to screen this year. If there’s one thing to be said about Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is that you’ve never seen a film like it before. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is up to you.
Reviewed by Evan Arppe.
