Hacksaw Ridge vs. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

Hey, I’m back. Sorry for the long (figurative) silence. It’s been a busy few months with school (uuugh), trying to get Devil done (I’m such a fucking procrastinator), and me messing around (going to advance screenings instead of doing my homework, seeing Fun Home, going to a concert with a random Facebook friend, et cetera). And it’s been a very, very rough week. I drank a lot of alcohol (a whole bottle of wine in fact) and stress-ate a lot during the election, and I think my body is still recovering from that (use your imagination to guess what I mean by that). I will probably eventually do a long ranting blog post on the election, but for now, let’s just say I voted for Clinton (with a lot of reservations, but to me, she was obviously the best choice) and let’s just say I am still angry & sad & disappointed that an orange fascist blob who starred in a fucking reality TV show is going to be our president. Honestly, Kim Kardashian could become our president someday; she’s just as qualified as Donald – she starred in a reality TV show and she’s a businesswoman. And on the plus side, she is way less racist and less misogynist and overall way less awful.

Okay, that turned out to be longer than I thought. Rant over!

Let me get to the main topic of this post. Instead of being a good student and studying and doing my homework, I’ve started going to advance screenings. This month, I’ve seen Hacksaw Ridge, Arrival, and Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. I recently looked at critics’ reviews of Hacksaw and Billy, and I was surprised to see that Hacksaw had quite a lot of glowing reviews while Billy, well, did not. While I liked Hacksaw and thought it was an entertaining film, after thinking about it a bit, I have some problems with it, which I shall discuss later. And while Billy had some flaws, I personally thought it was the better film. And a few negative reviews actually made me kind of pissed.

Let me refer to Pete Hammond’s review in Deadline. 

Review of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

(Warning: possible spoilers ahead)

“Other things weaved in and out include Billy’s interactions with his family and sister, and a brief relationship with a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader who gets it on with him at the game. Most of it is set at the game, and clearly the story is meant to show the disparity between what these men did in the heat of war versus the exploitation and difficulty they have once they are home. It hammers you on the head with one awkward sequence after another, none of it particularly believable or compelling. The squad itself comes off as boorish and downright unlikable at times, their behavior not befitting the image we have of our veterans. I guess that’s the point in some ways, but with one of them nearly strangling a football fan for no good reason….”

“Boorish and downright unlikable”? “Not befitting the image we have of our veterans”? “I guess that’s the point in some ways”? 

The squad is composed of soldiers who happen to be fucking young men. They have seen hell and they have – thank God – survived it. They make sex jokes because they are men who have lust and they like to mess around. They are flawed because they are human. Yes, their behavior might not match that of the behavior you think a soldier should have, but why should they fit that image? That image is not real. They are not mythical heroes; they are young men who are risking their lives in hellish war. So give them a fucking break. And okay, that scene where that one soldier strangled a football fan – yes, he shouldn’t have assaulted that fan, but come on, I understand where he is coming from. The soldier has seen horrors that honestly no human should ever see, has been forced to do things that no human should ever have to do – he’s fucking damaged and scarred, and who can fucking blame him for not coming home from war unscathed? Who can blame him for possessing a lot of anger? And though that football fan didn’t deserve to be strangled, he was being a fucking obnoxious jerk and the worst part is he thought that the soldiers were being obnoxious because they didn’t respond “appropriately” well to his half-assed, insult-ridden, perfunctory display of “respect.” He claims to support the troops – yet he makes snide comments about gay troops to the soldiers’ faces and implies that they’re losing the war because they’re too busy giving each other blowies. That football fan needed to shut the hell up and learn how to show the troops some real fucking respect.

Contrast the soldiers in Billy with the perfect non-violent Andrew Garfield in Hacksaw. The guy is fucking unbelievably perfect (and yeah, yeah, I know the movie is based on a true story, blah, blah, blah). He so enthusiastically signs up for war and is all gung-ho patriotic and in the movie you NEVER see him being a jerk or really otherwise flawed. There are some hints of him being scarred from the horrors he’s seen, but they come off so inauthentic and generic to me and nothing like the scarred soldiers in Billy. He’s probably what a “true” veteran should look like. Pssssh, give me a fucking break. Yes, I think soldiers are heroes, but soldiers are also real people. They have some damn flaws.

Also, yes, the war scenes in Hacksaw are way more gruesome and bloody than those in Billy and they are in fact a way magnificent because of their horror, but curiously, the movie comes off as pro-war. Andrew never comes to regret signing up for the hell that is war and is always just too fucking happy to do his duty & work for the good old USA. And the one character who is anti-war – Andrew’s father – is a mean old drunk alcoholic who eventually finds the key to his son being allowed to fight for good old America. Basically, Hacksaw is good old propaganda, and I think critics responded more favorably to it because despite its excess of gore, it’s an easier film to watch than Billy because never does it ever force us – or even try to – to think more deeply about why our government ships off young men to risk their lives to fight some war they didn’t start. And Billy, though it is at times ridiculous, makes the viewer see how callously we treat our troops and how shallow our praise of them is. And this is just me speculating, but perhaps that is why critics responded so lukewarmly to it. And some might say Billy is actually pro-war because after all, the soldiers go back to Iraq to fight. But that would totally be missing the message that these soldiers no longer feel at home in America and that there is nothing for them in this country and that the only way they can feel like they are worth something is if they risk getting shot in some senseless war.

But whatever, some people might dismiss me because I’m not a professional critic. But this is just what I think. Despite Billy being based on a novel and Hacksaw being based on a true story, Billy came off as more real and honest to me.

One last note, Joe Alwyn, the actor who plays Billy, gave a great performance and I hope he gets more roles.

-Lily, forever pro-troop and forever anti-war (not mutually exclusive, you all)

P.S. The portrayal of the Japanese in Hacksaw was problematic. They were kind of portrayed as the inhuman enemy instead of men who are doing atrocious things in the name of their country. And though the “enemy” wasn’t very present in Billy, they came off as ten times more human and their portrayal was a lot more nuanced.