O Julgamento de Billy Jack

This is the third of the Billy Jack films & possibly the worst. Taking place 5 years after the events of Billy Jack, we have our hero coming out of jail & reentering society to find his friends' school now a major hub of culture & education. No sooner than Billy starts to relax at his new environs, trouble arises when the locals want no part of his school & try to make sure that Billy & his masses go away. Clocking in at nearly 3 hours w/some okay fights & whole lot of speechifying, I kept checking my sanity as I had to sit through at least 2 vision quests, a lot of bad singing & imagery too ludicrous to be believed. Needlessly preachy & probably eschewing the filmmakers' beliefs rather than satisfying the audiences craving for ass kicking, this becomes more endurance test than actual film.

After serving his sentence for involuntary manslaughter, "Billy Jack" (Tom Laughlin) is released from prison and returns to the Freedom School on the Navajo Reservation. However, the residents of the nearby town still hold a great deal of animosity toward both him and the students at the school and the illegal harassment continues unabated. It gets so bad that both the students and Billy Jack retaliate in kind and this only aggravates the situation even worse. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a fairly long and dull movie which featured an incoherent plot, bad acting and equally awful music. That said, while I have no doubt there are some who either identify with this particular era in American history or idolize this motion picture, I honestly found it to be quite boring and very difficult to view to the very end. Again, it was long and dull. Because of that I recommend it only to fans of the series and have rated it accordingly. Below average.

Omaha, Nebraska, had the dubious honour of being the city Tom Laughlin chose to have the world premiere for "Trial of Billy Jack". I wish he'd given the honour to any other city but mine. I can't think of a film that was harder to sit through than this one; it seemed to never end. I had seen "Born Losers" and like it immensely. I'd seen the first Billy Jack, and it was okay. These are the only reasons I went to "Trial", and at 17 I guess you don't need any others; I was there on opening night in 1974.

The memory of the unending torment I endured while watching this film still sits in my brain, like a compost heap that never fully decomposes. Words can't express the boredom and agony of seeing this movie; 45 hours of labor with my first child was not as difficult. I should have walked out of the theater, and in fact, while the girl in the wheelchair was giving testimony, I did, leaving my fiance there to suffer by himself. I spent as much time as I could in the restroom, but knew I had to go back and face the rest of the film, if only for his sake. Run, don't walk, away from this piece of torture, if you're ever in the vicinity of a Billy Jack Retrospective, or find it while channel surfing. Your memory center will be glad you did.

Child abuse, the trampling of Indian rights, prejudice, illegal FBI wire-tapping and subterfuge, television exposes, campus shootings by the National Guard, the Mi Lai massacre, culture clashes, Jungian philosophy, police brutality, government corruption, karate, guns, and a spiritual journey are just some of the subjects explored in this sequel to Billy Jack. Surprisingly, despite the title, this is not a courtroom drama. The film is told in flashback, and the trial is over rather quickly. Instead, it's an angry film that was finished shortly after several of the campus killings (ie, Kent State) and Watergate. Most of the film's events and anti-government sentiment were taken directly from the events of the early 1970's.

The director's commentary on the DVD is very interesting, and my favorite discussion is when Tom and Delores acknowledge they "threw in everything but the kitchen sink." They both wish they had reduced the exposition and some of the plot lines, which would have certainly made it a better film, but they were being true to themselves at the time. Unfortunately, this makes the film too long and too preachy, but I still enjoyed it.

This is one of the BAD films I really enjoy. It is not painful or boring to watch but instead falls into the hokey and stupid category that make it great party film. Like Plan 9 from Outer Space, this movie tries so hard to say something and comes off as a completely laughable fiasco. The over-the-top completely serious aspects of the movie raise it to this level. The movie The Apple also rises (?) to this level of dreck as well.

Our hero (?) is Billy Jack, a half-breed American Indian who teaches peace through the repeated use of bone-crunching violence! It reminds me of the funny segment from the movie UHF when they advertise the fake movie "Gandhi 2" and feature Gandhi kicking butt and driving a sports car. It's so ridiculous, it's great! Amazingly enough, this was the third Billy Jack film (after The Born Losers and Billy Jack) and the first to bomb at the box office. In fact, the also deadly serious Billy Jack (1971) made zillions at the box office--not because it was a good film (though it wasn't quite as bad as The Trial of Billy Jack) but because it was a perfect film for the times. The hippy-ish aspects of the movies worked in 1971 but by 1974, it was reduced to a cliché.

A moment not to be missed in this movie--the little boy with a mechanical claw for a hand being gunned down by the evil soldiers as the boy tries to rescue his pet bunny! Meant to be poignant, it's just hysterically funny instead!

FYI--This film had the dubious distinction of being selected for inclusion in the book "The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time" by Harry Medved. I heartily agree with the choice--but must admit it gets a 2 because it's so darn funny--and it doesn't even intend to be!!