Sadly Over-hyped

Memorable, crazy movie

As Good As It Gets

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Billy Lynn (Joe Alwyn) serving in Iraq gets caught on camera doing his job. He instinctively goes after his Sargent (Vin Diesel) taken by the enemy and goes hand to hand with him without second thought. His company is brought back to the states to be paraded around like heroes. Billy has a touch of the PTSD and perhaps so does other men in his unit. His sister Kat (Kristen Stewart) loves him dearly. He confides in her as no one else. She doesn't want him to go back to Iraq. She knows he needs help and so does he. Billy is confused. He has flashbacks. The heroes end up as backup marchers to Destiny's Child, which was the film's unspoken statement...which is briefly touched on later.The production hits on various themes with no great emphasis. In the end the soldiers conclude it is not their world and not their fight. Maybe it is all about the bottom line. They do not consider themselves heroes, just people doing their job. But, like all of us, they will take what praise and thanks they can get. Perhaps what was good about the film is that it didn't have a strong point, but rather show a more realistic view that life isn't one sided, and people will do what they are driven to do for better or worse.Good job by Kristen Stewart who I normally rag on in my reviews.Guide: F-word. Brief distant sex scene.

Not since The Hulk has there been a horrible Ang Lee movie based on a well known fiction book. This movie, the last major movie to be filmed in high frame rate 3d and 4k until the next Avatar movies come out soon, was destined for failure. And it shows. While it looks amazing in HD quality, the pace of the scenes are slow as mollasses and the acting is bad lip syncing like a Godzilla American dub. Some of the cheerleaders in this movie are very hot. I tried finishing the movie but the disc skipped so i returned it to Netflix. I suggest you skip this movie and watch Hacksaw Ridge instead.

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

First, the photography in this, having the camera bounce back and forth from 3d person to first person views, really made the story hard to watch as it kept changing perspectives in the worst times, too frequently, and in a way that made everyone looking at the camera (even GREAT actors like Steve Martin) look like they were really straining to get through the script.So, the script - the idea of the soldiers touring the nation on a public affairs trips to get support for the overseas war, isn't a bad idea. BUT this focused way too much on the soldiers' trying to SELL their story to Hollywood and others, so they can make a movie based on them and each of the soldiers get money.This movie is supposed to be about the internal struggles going on with Billy, but the script really went far off base from that and just has you all over the place, mostly focusing on the soldiers trying to make money off of their military service, the troops' sergeant that is really REALLY over-acting in trying to act like their sergeant and negotiator for more money for them all, and only a little bit focusing on Billy and his mental struggles.The struggles are highlighted a LITTLE, very fragmented throughout the movie, with bouncing us between present day on their publicity tour and to the past with fragments of his deployment and coming home with a family that is worried about him and a sister, played by an actress that STILL cannot seem to every find an ounce of emotion to project, trying to convince him to go AWOL, just to get some Mental Health help. But again - the movie is MORE about these guys making money off of their story sold to the movies...A 4 rating was generous, I think, and only because I recognize the ATTEMPT to tell a story about one of our troops coming home and facing internal struggle - but really, if I wanted to rate the movie based on what it was supposed to be about - it would be a big zero. POORLY done, nightmare photography skills, really really bad script and acting and fragmented script bouncing between many segments of the story with a WAY OVER THE TOP, unreal cheesy and very unrealistic ending that would made every one of us Veterans looking at it and all saying, "Oh please....!" and being disgusted by the entire time just wasted watching this.