Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2016)

Please don't spend money on this.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

To summarize, I feel like that Randy Jackson's words from the Geico commercial sum it up best: "yo check it out dawg, that was just alright for me. I mean you got the walk, you got the stance, but I wasn't feeling this. You gotta come a little harder, you gotta figure it out. Ehhhhhh I don't know."The visual effects in the movie were much more amazing than the movie itself, especially during the half-time show. Even after the movie's concluded I find myself sitting here, wondering and thinking just what the movie was supposed to accomplish and did it do it? Certain aspects of the movie are touching and heart-felt, while a majority fail to stick the landing they were going for. The ending fight scene was ridiculous and if a gun was fired inside a building in a crowded stadium, someone would've gone to jail for it, no matter their rank. I understand the need to want to create drama, but let's color in the lines and not over-exaggerate (i.e. the soldiers act more like a group of frat boys than they do actual soldiers). I'll circle back to the cinematography - it was truly top notch and the war scenes were alluring, but it seems like there's a ton of build-up to the half-time show and while thats visually the best part of the movie, it just seems like there was no substance otherwise.

Improbable and unnecessary occurrences throughout the script, thus making the film rather silly. Some interaction that more closely resembled reality during the "real time" portion of the film would have given it a much more credible and believable outcome. The flashbacks were handled well and did, at least, provide some rationale for "present" time meaning.

This sees a couple of soldiers back on in the good US of A. But they are in between, because they are supposed to go back to the war zone. One in particular is praised as a hero, for what he did on the battlefield. And while he is not highest in rank, he is the one most are concentrating on. The story too, with his struggle and his flashbacks to the day that made him "famous".There are quite a few stars in this, some in really small roles (like Vin Diesel or Kristen Stewart), but what is important, is that everyone involved gives their best and it shows on screen. You may know where this is going, but it still is a very fine watch. A tough movie to watch, with obvious stabs at many thins (media attention, praise but also false heroism and much more) ... it really is like a mirror showing a couple of bad sides of society. Then again, is there a chance to change?

For a film made by one of the modern era's greatest story-tellers, Billy Lynn's Long Half Time Walk is an incredibly disappointing film.That for all its so called technical wizardry (the film was shot at the highest ever feature film frame rate) the film seemed to have forgotten how to tell its rather simple, yet over-stuffed story that's filled with some of last year's most cringe-worthy snippets of dialogue.It's really hard to fathom just what director Ang Lee was thinking here.Coming away from one of his biggest successes in the form of the artistically stunning Life of Pi and previous hits such as Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, you'd expect a lot more from Ang Lee, and in adapting Ben Fountain's well-received book of the same name, it seemed as though Billy Lynn really could've been one of those big commercial drama hits that also plays extremely well to the awards crowd.The finished product is anything but however, as this emotion free affair, that sometimes does look awfully pretty (in an odd artificial-like way) fails to make us care one little bit about newcomer Joe Alwyn's Billy Lynn and his crew of fellow American soldiers and as the title suggests this really does become a loooong walk (more for us than anyone else) as Lee's film goes from barely interesting scene to less interesting scene as we partake in a series of meet and greets and war flashbacks that never feel like they're threatening to become anything more than sporadically engaging.You get where Lee and his team were trying to go, a darkly funny and sometimes downright sad look at the way in which war shapes people's lives but when the film we get is filled with such average dialogue, cookie cutter characters including Steve Martin's do-gooder football team owner Norm and Chris Tucker's loud-mouthed agent Albert and one of the dumbest romantic side plots we've seen in sometime, there's really no wonder as to why this film was a huge bomb upon initial release.Final Say – A good example showing off that wiz-bang new technology or so-called technological advancements don't make a good movie, Billy Lynn is an unengaging experience that fails to capture our hearts of imaginations and while there are the odd sprinklings of decent moments within this forgettable walk, you expect a lot more from the likes of Ang Lee.1 ½ angry roadies out of 5