O Julgamento de Billy Jack

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.

Following the events of the previous movie, Billy Jack (Tom Laughlin) stands trial and is sentenced by the corrupt system to prison. The kids from the Freedom School decide to fight the system themselves.

The movie makes a big early mistake. After Billy Jack gets sentenced, the movie needs to follow him into prison. Instead, his prison time is skipped over and the movie follows a bunch of no name kids with his wife. His wife is charismatically challenge, not to say that he's some great actor either. After he's released, the movie follows our hero once again. This is part personal vanity project and part sincere hippie idealism. It could be indie camp if only it's not three freakin' hours long. It's so long and so slow. It's obvious that Laughlin is throwing everything into the cooking pot. This is the result of an unencumbered artist who has more confidence than skills.

After the first Billy Jack movie where he went to prison for five years for involuntary manslaughter the freedom school that Delores Taylor was building on the Indian reservation has expanded quite nicely. There are a whole lot of young people of all kinds now living there and attending school and absorbing the radical ideas as the locals see it of the school.

And the school has done one thing more. They have a pirate radio station on the reservation and are doing all kinds of exposes that some of the powerful locals aren't crazy about. The maddest of the lot is Riley Hill who is the brother of Bert Freed who was the owner of the local Ponderosa in the first Billy Jack movie. Freed moved away after the death of his son, but Hill is the local banker and that position gives him leverage on a lot of the locals.

Poor Taylor whose passive non-violence is being put to some stressful tests in this film as it was in the last film is caught in the middle. And Tom Laughlin is off on a vision quest not be disturbed. That gives the bad guys a chance to do their worst. Which leads to a horrible Kent State like confrontation at the school on the reservation.

This film could easily have told the story in a third to half of its running time. But I suppose producers Laughlin and Taylor couldn't bear to cut a single frame. It really dilutes the story and blunts the impact of the climax.

Still Billy Jack's fans should like The Trial Of 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.