Billy Jack

Rating:
Summary: One Of The Greatest Movies Of All Time!
Review: The movie Billy Jack was a film industry phenomenon when it was first released. It still retains just as much a powerful psychological and emotional impact today. It is a "hippie western" that preaches the message of peace, love and individualism. Unfortunately this philosophy can be greatly thwarted by bigotedly intolerant, narrow-minded and arrogant people in a very small town.
The "Freedom School" contains many minorities of people: American Indians, long-haired hippies, blacks, socially and emotionally dysfunctional youths, etc. The "redneck" townspeople in this very small southwestern town verbally harass, physically abuse and mentally torture these youths with illegally discriminating behavior.
The half-breed Indian Billy Jack defends these defenseless people by utilizing his wonderful martial arts skills. Billy Jack wreaks righteous revenge on the perpetrators of these injustices. A message that this fantastic and always timely film evokes is this: that the wrongdoing of warped bigotry, devastatingly horrible slander, etc. is not always cured by "turning the other cheek". Sometimes malevolent force has to be destroyed by benevolent force.
The movie Billy Jack has attained a mythic cult classic status. When you consider the very limited budget this movie was created with and the very powerful impact it has had since its first release I would have to rate this film as one of the greatest movies of all time. Its message: " that the majority over the minority and might makes right " can be toppled and corrected by righteous revenge defending the meek is just as vital today as it was thousands of years ago. "The meek shall inherit the earth". The half-breed Indian Billy Jack assisted the meek and weak to inherit their rightful part of the earth in that very small redneck town.
There have been some social instances similar to this social scenario in the movie Billy Jack that have occurred in reality. I can empathize with this movie because I have witnessed a similar situation in my hometown.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful film.
Review: This is probably my favorite movie. I watch it over and over. The right-wingers who reviewed it here seem not to have liked it. That's to be expected. Some of the criticisms are very strange. This film is of a particular time and place, and speaks from a particular place ideologically. This is true of all films, and these are not valid criticisms of Billy Jack.

This film is absolutely honest and genuine. It is not particularly well-made, in a technical sense, but it is an explicit attempt to deal with many important issues: War and peace, racism, class, law and rebellion, pacifism and resistance, and masculinity. This last issue is the most important in the film. Billy Jack, Bernard, Martin, Stuart Posner, Sheriff Cole, all these characters are part of this film's examination of what it means to be a man. I think it's quite sad that so many people have utterly missed the depth of this movie.

I have loved this movie for twenty years and I've never been embarassed by it. It's almost impossible to summarize Billy Jack. You have to actually sit and watch it to understand it.

Rating:
Summary: A politically correct racist film loved by liberals & hippes
Review: I loved the review by the very liberal American father of two living in mainland China. He prattles on and on about violent Chuck Norris films. Our friend writes:

"This is the emergence of random, racist violence in the ordinary street."

"Americans don't want to face the role violence plays in their society: violence of men against women, whites against blacks, adults against children, and, internationally, Americans against the underdeveloped world."

The funny part is this gentleman is working and living in a communist police state with a long history of oppression and mass murder against it's citizens while he opines about (really imaginary) racism in America. I guess he never gets the news about the brutal repression by the Bejing against the peaceful & spiritual Falun Gong/Dafa group in China or China's brutal repression against Tibet. Nary a word about how mainland Chinese authorities made money off tainted blood infected with AIDS that was used for rural healthcare in China. Farmers or rural peasants became infected with AIDS. They asked authorities for better healthcare as they were dying. The communist Chinese authorities responded by beating the sick peasants up. How compassionate to beat up people dying from AIDs. Nothing about how China uses slave labor within China or how they subcontract work to slave laborers in their client-state of North Korea.

Our friend goes on about imaginary American racism but never discusses the Cultural Revolution in communist China where he lives. As Tom Laughlin was releasing his Billy Jack movie about mostly imaginary racism in America circa 1971, communist China was about halfway (1964-1975) their Cultural Revolution in which over 6 million Chinese were murdered by the communist Chinese government.

My guess is is this man probably thinks socialist fascism, mass murder & racism in Third World countries is acceptable while imaginary cinematic right wing fascism in America is evil. My guess is this guy is still stuck in 1971 with Billy Jack.

Our progressive American friend in China, working for the benefit of his repressive communist bosses probably never realized, as mentioned in one review, that many native Americans found this movie to be racist with liberal whites playing Indians. As the one lady pointed out, Tom Laughin squints a bit to make you think he is a native American. It is a shame Tom Laughlin could not have done a sequel about an oppressed black man where Tom was the lead character in black face makeup.







Rating:
Summary: Billy Jack Series In Perspective
Review: I actually came here looking to purchase movies 2 and 3 in the series and was amazed to find the reviews so negative - especially from previous fans.

How can you compare this movie to today's action-packed and digitally mastered/computer enhanced movies and call it lacking? It was made in the 70s with a 70s theme. You enjoyed it then and like giligan's island, bonanza and Sound of Music - or even the original star trek, you cannot watch it today without thinking the scenes are a little bland and, yes, somewhat cheezy UNLESS you put it into perspective. If you recently saw it again and found it lacking, I suggest you have let the passage of time, today's technology and today's "me" society affect you in unfavorable ways. I just watched the first movie with my 18 year old nephew - HE could relate to the movie even though it didn't have all of the theatrical and computer super effects. If he could understand and even enjoy the movie's context despite its 1971 lack of technical effects, why can't you remember - and enjoy it as you did once?

Rating:
Summary: A Terrible Movie, and Mislabeled to Boot
Review: First things first. The copy of this movie I ordered said it contained special features and an optional French language track. It contained no special features, despite the labelling on the box. It also contains no optional French track. I speak English and not French, so that doesn't affect me; but somewhere out there I'll bet there is an irritated Quebecois with a copy of Billy Jack that he can't understand.

I envy that Quebecois. If I didn't understand English, I am sure the dialogue I made up in my head would be more entertaining than the endless stream of stereotypes that form the script to Billy Jack Every stereotype in the book is here from rednecks who kill horses just because horses are nice and rednecks are mean, to white hippies who instruct Native American kids in the Indian Way (psychic powers, taking your shoes off when 20 people want to beat you up, etc.) at a school where the only assignment is to "get turned on by creating something."

The really pathetic thing is that so many of us back in the seventies, myself included, used to think this was great cinema. I recently watched this movie again for this first time in over twenty years, and I could not understand what I or anyone else thought was redeeming about it. As social commentary it is no more than a juvenile, self-righteous string of cliches; and it is also a dud as an action movie. 2004 GOP presidential hopeful (I'm not making this up) Tom Laughlin in the title role doesn't give the audience any more than ten minutes at most of what could be called action sequences.

Realizing Billy Jack is probably the worst movie I've ever seen is sadder than hearing there was no Easter Bunny, but I have to admit the truth. If you are an old Billy Jack fan from way back, don't make the mistake I made. Keep your memories and leave this stinker on the shelf. It has not aged well.

Rating:
Summary: billy jack collection
Review: I THINK THESE BILLY JACK MOVIES WERE GREAT WHEN I WAS A TEEN ME & MY FRIENDS WENT TO THE MOVIES TO SEE THESE ALL OF US GIRLS CRIED AT THE END . I CAN'T BELIEVE THE OTHER REVIEWS THAT I READ ON THIS MOVIE MAYBE IT WAS TO DEEP FOR THEM TO UNDERSTAND THE MEANING THESE MOVIES WERE ABOUT PEOPLE TRYING TO BE THEMSEVES NOT A SEX NOT A COLORTHAT SOCIETY COULDN'T EXCEPT AND BILLY WAS TRYING TO STAND UP FOR THEIR RIGHTS BECAUSE THEY WOULDN'T BECAUSE THEY STOOD FOR NON VIOLENCE SO PEOPLE WATCH IT AND PAY ATTENTION TO THE REAL MEANING AND YOU WOULD ENJOY IT AS MUCH AS ALL THE PEOPLE I KNOW. IT'S DEFINETLY WORTHHAVING

Rating:
Summary: If you're old enough to remember when this first came out,
Review: you more than likely thought it was one of the greatest films ever made, and left the theatre holding your fist high in support of all Billy Jack stood for. I know I did. He was, after, on the side that mattered.
Watch it again now. My first reaction was, "What the hell did I ever see in this?" And not because I've become a conservative in my more mature (ahem)age, either, because I most definitely haven't. There's nothing wrong with the basic principals in the movie, but they get lost here. I just think that in your teens, you look at films far more emotionally than critically.
This one had medicore to just bad acting, a paper-thin plot, and included almost every stereotype in the book. This is another one to buy cheap... if at all.

Rating:
Summary: A non-Fascist Chuck Norris
Review: This movie is accounted "bad" because audiences want their violence all the way down, and are made uncomfortable by the juxtaposition, in the Billy Jack films, of ultraviolence with idealism and pacifism.

If we're sitting in a theater, watching Chuck Norris "waste" (waste?) people, it is hard to be reminded that "another world is possible". But this is precisely what Tom Laughlin does when he sees the face of the Indian child who's been abused by the whites of the town, and speaks of its purity, and "just goes berserk".

In a typical Chuckster film such as Walker, Texas Ranger, the audience is able to enjoy violence without guilt because Walker, or Rambo, is careful to legitimize his violence. The dinks, slopes, geeks and gemokes he "wastes" (wastes?) have no humanity and in the anonymous darkness of the theater, or of our apartment, we laugh mindlessly at their pain, in a way nobody, and I mean nobody, is permitted to even represent what happened to Americans on Sep 11 in Manhattan...lest audiences on the West Bank laugh at falling Yuppies.

Norris either associates it with a given authority (Walker, *** Texas Ranger ***) or like Rambo has a sponsor/father within an organization.

What is almost metaphysically frightening in the Billy Jack films, which I saw when they came out in 1971, is the truth.

This is the emergence of random, racist violence in the ordinary street.

Americans don't want to face the role violence plays in their society: violence of men against women, whites against blacks, adults against children, and, internationally, Americans against the underdeveloped world.

Fashionable "man bites dog" semiotics reverse the polarity: but the standard polarities of men against women, whites against black, rich against poor, etc., comprise the roofbeams and rafters of society.

Billy Jack was a "bad" movie because it failed to reassure the audience that the violence that underlay social structures, in his movie, violence by Anglos against Indians, was OK.

It frightens an audience when an apparently white male like Billy Jack goes berserk not for some hidden authority but in purity of intent.

But somehow, old Tom Laughlin still rakes in royalties from the film because out there, people find him strangely attractive precisely to the extent he's not some lone, crazed lunatic fighting battles on behalf of an uncaring Father.

There's a lot of loose talk about how Hollywood sellout liberals rake in the bucks while being "progressive" but Tom Laughlin was a true progressive and he has been marginalized. Good for him.

The title song is apropos to an era of selfishness, greed and violence:

Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago,
About a kingdom on a mountain,
And the valley folk below.

The mountain people had a treasure,
Buried underneath a stone.
The valley people sought that treasure,
Sought it for their very own.

Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend,
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing,
Come the judgement day.
On the bloody morning after...
One tin soldier rides away.

The valley people sent a message
To the kingdom on the hill,
Asking for that buried treasure,
Tons of gold for which they'd kill.

The mountain people sent their answer,
"With our brothers we will share
All the riches of our mountain,
All the treasures buried there."

Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend,
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing,
Come the judgment day.
On the bloody morning after...
One tin soldier rides away.

The valley people cried in anger,
"Mount your horses! Draw your swords!"
They killed all the mountain people,
So they earned their just rewards.
As they stood beside the treasure,
On the mountain dark and red,
They turned the stone and looked beneath it.
"Peace on Earth" was all it said."

Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend,
Do it in the name of Heaven,
You can justify it in the end.
There won't be any trumpets blowing,
Come the judgment day.
On the bloody morning after...
One tin soldier rides away.

Rating:
Summary: Finally got people thinking about the Native American again!
Review: Even though it was another cheesy-type drive-inn movie.
It did get people to think about the forgotten Native American again, kind of like "Dances with Wolves". Tom Laughlin has always had a passion for the Native American, and it was great to see it in this movie. Although, I am in no way comparing the two films.



Rating:
Summary: If only it were possible to give this a minus rating.
Review: This, I believe, is the dumbest movie ever made. The nonviolent pacifist uses violence to achieve his ends. Its garbled message is just too hard to believe. Don't waste your time or money on this pathetic piece of junk. I was completely clueless at the time and still am to see what others saw/see in this clunker.