Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

I’m still not sure how I feel about the particular look of the film.

It was shot in that 48 frames per second rate that gives it this soap opera feel. Same notion we got from the 1st Hobbit film which I hated. Made me feel like I should be playing the movie on my X- Box

Although I did not get the same emotion from Bill Lynn, in fact the 48 frames made for a more surrealistic approach. This definitely hit home when Ang Lee did those point of view close ups. It made me feel like Vin Diesel was looking right at me talking about he loves me (shiver down my spine)

But it was a good dramatic role for Vin. Nothing out of the ordinary, playing a solider who cares about his troops, we seen him do that in all Seven of the Fast and Furious movies, but he does show just the slightest bit a range so we can see he’s not just a though guy with muscles.

The story is about a group of Marines , but like the tile suggest, mostly focus on Bill Lynn. They just had an instance battle in Iraq were they lost one of there own and now they are being paraded around as good publicity for the troops and the war. The movie is about one particular stop at the halftime show of the Thanksgiving Day football game.

During this game, Billy starts to half doubts about his military career, torn between the family he joined the military for (Namely a Sister who needed money for an operation and now feels guilty that her brother entered the Marines for her), and the brotherhood he would leave behind if he left (Like his Commanding officer, played by Garrett Hedlund whose not willing to let a good Marine give up his career).

Meanwhile, Christ Tucker is in the movie as an agent for the Marines whose setting them up for a Hollywood movie deal (Interesting enough, I think this movie is the deal that was made).

What I like best about the movie is we live in a world right now where it’s really favorable to honor those who serve our country, not that I have absolutely anything against this, but it was great to see even Marines roll their eyes a bit over all this propaganda. Plus I like the fact that they did not (or could not) get Beyonce to do the movie and instead got Destiny’s child impersonators who you never see from the front to do. It adds something to the illusion of importance, something that the whole movie seems to me questioning as the half-time show says The Marines are big part of something, but does a bad job to make them feel like it.

I did not see it in 3d but it’s a good movie to catch in General.