(Kristen Stewart &
Joe Alwyn)
Witty, affecting and ultimately disturbing portrait of the
US that is well worth a visit. (Review by Patrick Compton – 8)
One of director Ang Lee’s many virtues is that he doesn’t
make the same film twice. His catholic tastes have resulted in a series of fine
movies as varied as Brokeback Mountain,
Life of Pi, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm,
Ride with the Devil and Lust,
Caution.
In this, the prolific Taiwanese-born director’s latest
outing, we slip back in time to 2004 when the United States had more than 10,000
troops in Iraq and George W Bush was in the White House. The main character,
Billy Lynn (a charming performance by Joe Alwyn), is young, shy and eminently
likeable. A trooper back from Iraq, he and his comrades in Bravo Company are to
be paraded before a huge crowd at a professional gridiron game in Dallas,
Texas.
The point of the exercise is to make the troopers – and by
implication the war itself – more familiar to the “folks back home”. The result
is the opposite: the innocent Billy, awarded a medal for courage during a
particularly hellish firefight in Iraq, finds himself drowning in a stew of
duplicitous American commercialism in which his company is ruthlessly
exploited. Which is closer to home, he wonders, this kind of reception or his
dangerous but in some ways more authentic life with his comrades in a foreign
land?
The sense of alienation active soldiers feel while on leave
“back home” is hardly a unique theme in cinema or literature, but this film
handles it particularly well in a gently ironic, realistic kind of way which,
if anything, increases the power of its bleak resolution.
The movie largely focuses on the soldiers’ half-time
appearance at the football game where the soldiers are to be advertised during
a show by Destiny’s Child (in the days when Beyoncé was a member). Here we are
introduced to the owner of the local football team, the sinister Norm Oglesby
(Steve Martin) who wants to feature the soldiers in a Hollywood movie. There
are also some scenes at Billy’s dysfunctional Texas home where he has a
particularly close relationship with his troubled sister Kathryn (an excellent
cameo from Kristen Stewart).
Throughout all this, the film regularly flashes back to
Billy’s combat experiences in Iraq, leading up to the climactic action that
earned him a medal. Here, the movie addresses the dangers of the war, its apparent
lack of any positive resolution, and his relationships with his comrades in
general and his commanding officers Dime (Garrett Hedlund) and the
quasi-mystical warrior Shroom (Vin Diesel) in particular.
Lee, a naturalised American, both understands his country
and is able to observe it with an outsider’s eye. The scenes inside the
football stadium, the razzmatazz and rampant commercialism, offer a powerful
contrast to life on the front line, while the quieter scenes largely focus on
Billy’s relationship with his sister who is desperate to stop him from
returning to Iraq.
Billy Lynn’s Long
Halftime Walk is not an obvious hit for Lee, and it bombed in the United
States, largely, one suspects, because Trump voters didn’t appreciate what they
saw when they looked into the mirror. But for me the film is a witty, affecting
and ultimately disturbing portrait of the US that is well worth a visit.
The movie opened at Cinema Nouveau, Gateway, on March 10. –
Patrick Compton
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