My review of 'Billy Jack'
Source: http://www.freewebs.com/mhbj
I hope you enjoy it!
BILLY JACK (1971)
(Directed by Tom Laughlin)
"Billy Jack......a movie where liberals are allowed to break the law, but conservatives are evil for doing so..."- Signed by MartialHorror.
Plot: I'm sure there's one of these somewhere in this movie......Uuuuuh, a halfbreed Native American defends his people from bigotry and injustice and stuff.......
Review:
As much as I love film and especially martial arts films, “Billy Jack” and I never crossed paths until now. While no longer remembered by the masses, it was an iconic film for western martial artists or fans of said martial artists back in its day. Remember that this was before Bruce Lee, who was before Chuck Norris, who was before Jean Claude Van Damme. In a sense, this was the first western martial arts film. My Dad- a Karate teacher himself- would often tell me about this movie as he fondly remembered it. But when he would talk about the movie, he would usually just bring up one scene. He would describe to me the titular character, how he would stare an enemy down, tell him that he's going to kick him in the face and that there isn't anything to be done about it, and then proceeds to do just that. My Father wasn't the only one who loved this scene either. Other relatives and even a few friends would excitedly tell me about the scene. Even Kung Fu books would reference “Billy Jack” simply so it could talk about the scene. So I finally saw the movie and you know what?
THAT SCENE IS AS AWESOME AS EVERYONE SAYS IT IS!
The set up is great. Billy Jack (Tom Laughlin, who co-wrote and directed as well) has just finished kicking the crap out of two punks for harassing some girls from his tribe. He calmly takes off his shoes and steps outside. The camerawork becomes sharper at this point and the direction becomes tighter. We see Billy slowly become surrounded by a bunch of thugs and it ends with him coming face to face with Mr. Posner (Bert Freed), who has a score to settle with Billy. Posner talks tough, indicating that he's going to hurt Billy despite Billy's “Karate tricks”. Then Billy says the most badass line in the entire movie: “I'm gonna take this right foot, and I'm gonna whop you on that side of your face... ". He points to Posner's face. He continues: “and you wanna know something? There's not a damn thing you're gonna be able to do about it.”. Posner is incredulous, but Billy confirms it one last time before doing exactly what he said he was going to do. Part of the coolness is Billy's attitude, part of it is the well executed kick. What follows is a shockingly good fight scene where Billy takes on the thugs. The kicks (which aren't performed by Laughlin, but by Hapkido expert Bong Soo Han.) are incredibly well executed in a believable-but-stylish kind of way. Fight scenes are hard to pull off in the west because stuntmen aren't used to advanced choreography, but “Billy Jack” was on top of its game here. The fight scenes are vastly superior to the ones found in Chuck Norris's films (like “The Octagon”). The punches are sloppier, but to be fair, punches were much trickier than kicks at this time. Even Bruce Lee struggled delivering believable punches because they either look too fake or someone is going to get seriously hurt. But Laughlin makes this work by looking like he's hitting them quite hard (usually with more chops than punches though), so even when they look rough or sloppy, they do appear more realistic than usual. This whole scene was epic.
If you're wondering why I'm spending so much time on this scene, that's because there is a good reason people refer to this scene alone when talking about the movie. In most cases, I suspect this is the only scene that people remember about this movie. Because beyond this scene, there are no real martial arts. Beyond this scene, the story becomes confused and jumbled. Beyond this scene, the message is lost amongst the grating Hippie atmosphere. Beyond this scene, the movie kinda sucks.
Well, maybe not “sucks”. It just hasn't aged well.
“Billy Jack” strikes me as an 'almost' good movie. What it tries to do is admirable and maybe if I was around in 1971, I would''ve embraced the film much more. There's just too many contradictory ideas within the characters. Example, just look at the characters. Bernard Posner (David Roya) is introduced as unable to kill a horse and seems like he's breaking down under the pressure of his Father. This makes us sympathize with him. However, we learn as the movie goes on that Bernard is a jerk and he only gets worse. Even more poorly handled is the whole subplot between a Deputy trying to get his daughter back. When introduced, the daughter is rude, bitchy and snide. The Father is trying to be patient and caring. It got to a point that when he slapped her, I was GLAD. But the Father ends up being a bad guy and the girl is supposed to be sympathetic. Why should we feel that? The girl begins the movie like a hostile bitch while the Father is trying to be caring, but we're supposed to take the side of the girl? *beep* Even Billy Jack is poorly written in this regard. He opens the film telling the bad guys that they're breaking the law and if they don't stop, *beep* will get violent. This suggests he's law abiding, but then he spends the rest of the movie BREAKING THE LAW IN SO MANY WAYS. So it's okay for him to do so, but not the bad guys? Perhaps the movie was trying to add depth to these characters. Perhaps bad people were capable of good and vice versa, but they just didn't pull it off well and it backfired.
The message is also something that aged poorly. For one, the film takes too many potshots at white culture (or what was perceived to be white culture; example, Christianity). He says that the “Indian” way is the right way to go. Um, do I have to remind you that Native American tribes have also done horrendous things too? More noticeable and I think this was somewhat intentional, the film deals with the hippie movement and the conservatives who fought against it. The poor audio and the fact that everyone talks over each other during a pivotal sequence made it difficult for me to follow, but I think the message was that both sides were exactly how the other side perceived them to be. I did like the idea but the film also seems to take the hippie side too much. I haven't even gotten to the fact that the film seems unsure whether Billy is in the right by the end of the movie. To be fair, most critics who claim this *beep* is “Fascist” tend to overreact. “Dirty Harry”, for example, was less about political issues and more about moral issues. I don't know about you, but if I had to torture a serial killer to save the life of an innocent girl, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But Billy tends to take things too far. The film itself isn't sure if it wants to back his actions or condemn them, as it seems to be doing both.
But most importantly, the film is just too amateurishly made and full of filler. There are a lot of scenes just about hippies being hippies. They sing, they dance, they ride horses,and it gets boring after about two seconds. Sometimes, something appears like it's going to happen and capture my interest but then the situation is diffused. Considering the movie is titled after Billy Jack, he doesn't seem to be in the movie too much. When Billy was around, I was more interested as Laughlin has an easy going charm about him that makes the character compelling. The rest of the acting ranges from passable to amateurish to just downright awful. The direction is mostly 'eh', but that one scene was great and there is some nice cinematography at times. I would've forgiven this shoddiness if I was more entertained. But I wasn't, so I did not like the movie.
Yet..........I can't hate it either.
I think “Billy Jack” tried. You could see the film is doing its best to juggle around themes and capture the culture and the counter culture of the time. The film works great as a time capsule for the 70's. The movie just failed to leave an impact on me. I respect it for its effort, and I liked Laughlin, and that one scene was amazing......I just didn't care about anything else. That one scene made the film almost worth it and I honestly doubt I will remember any of its faults because they're just generic. Perhaps one day I will enthusiastically relate this film to someone, only remembering that one fight scene. Because I sure as hell won't remember anything else.
Violence: Rated PG-13 worthy.
Nudity: Yeah there is some. One woman strips and is raped. We see glimpses of another girl who looks too young to be sexy (the character claims she's 13. I doubt she's that age in reality but she does look strikingly young). Rated R worthy.
Overall: “Billy Jack” might be worth watching for “the scene” or if you like 70's hippie films. Maybe it's worth watching for its cult status, but don't expect a good movie.
2/4 Stars
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