Pity the film that dares to put long, never-ending or epic in its title.
Ang Lee’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is the unfortunately but also accurately named account of a young American soldier’s brush with pop patriotism. Billy Lynn (an impressive Joe Alwyn) is part of the Bravo Squad that has returned from a successful military stint in Iraq and is being paraded as part of a victory tour at an American soccer game. The Bravo Squad has to endure hand-wringing publicists and talent agents, the fake backslapping of numerous Americans who are relieved that their sons are not the ones being gutted in Iraq, and genuine questions on the prowess of their weapons.
These boy soldiers pretending to be men expose their youth through their irreverence, salty speech, short-fused tempers, and lust for cheerleaders. In one of the best-realised satirical moments in this adaptation of Ben Fountain’s novel of the same name, 19-year-old Billy has tears in his eyes while saluting to a rendition of the American national anthem. Billy is moved, but not in the way you imagine. He is actually thinking of cheerleader Faison (Makenzie Leigh), with whom he has had an encounter behind a curtain.
The story unfolds over the course of a day and is intercut, often inelegantly, with Billy’s wartime experiences and his conversations with his accident victim sister (Kristen Stewart), whose treatment costs have pushed the Texan teenager into risking his life in the land of the “hajis”. In Iraq, Billy earns a medal after he shoots dead the fighters who attacked his Bhagwad Gita-quoting sergeant Shroom (Vin Diesel). Billy’s unease at being feted at an event that is more about sponsorship and razzmatazz than recognising the valour and sacrifices of soldiers lingers throughout the day, and he contemplates leaving the Army that has made something of a man out of him.
The casting against type does nothing for Diesel or Steve Martin, playing the smooth billionaire who is being wooed by talent manger Albert (Chris Tucker) to fund a movie on the Bravo Squad’s bravery. Better cast, and stealing the scene, is Garrett Hedlund as Sergeant Dime, the Bravo Squad’s leader. A hard-bitten but good-hearted war veteran who knows how to adjust the leash on his frisky wards, Dime is the future that awaits Billy Lynn. Billy can die in war like Shroom, or survive and approach wisdom like Dime.
The uneven mix of satire, war critique and drama has been shot at an enhanced frame rate that results in immersive and occasionally unnerving close-ups, but the technological experiment does little to bring out the movie’s themes. Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers, about a similarly hollow victory parade for Marines who participated in the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945, made its points with greater economy and feeling. Lee brings a welcome foreign eye to the rituals of patriotism as entertainment, but his gaze is too distant to capture the precise rhythms of why this is a uniquely American story. There is enough in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk to generalise to other difficult and morally compromised wars fought by other nations. Would a similar movie be made in India about “surgical strike” veterans who dare to doubt their role in keeping their homeland safe? Keep dreaming.
But the specifics of the story are lost amidst the clumsy back-and-forthing between the past and the present, the sluggish pace, and the timidity with which Lee and writer Jean-Christophe Castelli approach potentially incendiary material. Lee takes a Zen approach. This movie needed a bit of Che.
