Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

Based on a book by Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk follows Joe Alwyn’s Billy Lynn as he and his platoon are brought home for a victory tour after a brutal Iraq battle – with the movie detailing the characters’ exploits at the expansive Superbowl game where the title happening is to transpire. It’s a decidedly thin premise that’s employed to watchable yet far-from-spectacular effect by director Ang Lee, as the filmmaker spends a good chunk of screentime emphasizing the various minutiae involved in the buildup to the aforementioned Superbowl event – with the movie detailing, among other things, the protagonists’ initial arrival at the stadium, their press conference before the game, their interactions with the two teams’ athletes, etc, etc. It’s clear, however, that Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk benefits substantially from its uniformly terrific performances, with, especially, Alwyn’s impressively captivating and thoroughly sympathetic turn as the tortured central figure compensating for the movie’s somewhat erratic atmosphere on an ongoing basis (ie the film is at its best when focused on the subdued, character-study-like exploits of its hero). And while Lee’s aggressively in-your-face visual choices remain a rather palpable distraction – eg the movie often seems as though it’s attempting a new record for tight close-ups – Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk also contains a number of Iraq-set battle sequences that are far more engrossing and enthralling than one might’ve anticipated. (There’s one in particular that rivals anything in most contemporary action movies in terms of pure thrills.) It’s ultimately difficult to justify Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk‘s almost two-hour running time, as there is, in the end, simply not enough material here to sustain a picture of this length (and yet it’s difficult to deny the impact of a few key performances and sequences).

**1/2 out of ****