Billy Lynn drops the ball

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This article was published 19/11/2016 (3602 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A disappointing effort from a master filmmaker, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk trips in all the wrong places. Director Ang Lee’s adaptation of the Ben Fountain book is saddled with an inconsistent plot, maudlin melodrama and surprising cynicism about the heroism of young soldiers coming home from war.

British newcomer Joe Alwyn stars as Billy, a 19-year-old army specialist in Iraq who becomes a household name when footage of him aiding his wounded sergeant Shroom (Vin Diesel) goes viral.

His Bravo Squad unit returns to the United States for a two-week dog-and-pony show ending in a halftime celebration at a Thanksgiving football game.

Billy and his fellow soldiers deal with the ups and downs of the day: a film producer (Chris Tucker) is hustling to get their tale made into a movie, Billy hits it off with a cheerleader (Makenzie Leigh) and the guys run into drunken spectators and disrespectful crew while dealing with their own PTSD.

Spliced in randomly are flashbacks to the fateful battle that took one of their own, as well as Billy’s interactions with his sister Kathryn (Kristen Stewart).

Lee experimented with filming Billy Lynn in a 120-frames-per-second format (not available in Winnipeg), a technique meant to make the scenes seem more “live.” It leads to a lot of close-ups on characters’ faces, plus there’s not that much action for it to make a difference.

The director doesn’t infuse his latest with the emotion he mined in films such as Brokeback Mountain, yet what he does well is let the audience feel Billy’s conflicted point of view. In one sequence, the chaos of the big game is directly contrasted with the paranoia of walking streets in the Middle East.

Though it’s a small role, Diesel’s Shroom pulls off canned lines with believable depth, while Garrett Hedlund is superb as Bravo’s outspoken leader.

The conceit of Long Halftime Walk is intriguing. Yet while the movie leans into the Bravo company as a band of brothers and on Billy as a teen pulled between family and duty, those themes are undone by the barrage of outsiders who want to co-opt their harrowing story. The viewer appreciates the closeness of this tight-knit group, but not by the pessimism around them.

It may put some points on the scoreboard, but ultimately Billy Lynn gets sacked for a loss.

— USA Today