Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

2016 Directed by Ang Lee

19-year-old Billy Lynn is brought home for a victory tour after a harrowing Iraq battle. Through flashbacks the film shows what really happened to his squad - contrasting the realities of war with America's perceptions.

Joe Alwyn Kristen Stewart Chris Tucker Garrett Hedlund Vin Diesel Steve Martin Makenzie Leigh Ismael Cruz Córdova Arturo Castro Ben Platt Deirdre Lovejoy Tim Blake Nelson Beau Knapp Bruce McKinnon Astro Gregory Alan Williams Bo Mitchell Ricky Muse Ric Reitz Barney Harris Laura Lundy Wheale Allen Daniel Randy Gonzalez Matthew Barnes Austin McLamb Mason Lee Tommy McNulty Markina Brown Eric Kan Show All…

Alternative Titles

Billy Lynns Long Halftime Walk, Долгий путь Билли Линна в перерыве футбольного матча, 빌리 린의 롱 하프타임 워크, Billy Lynn Honor y Sentimiento, Billy Lynn hosszú, félidei sétája

drama war

113 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by davidehrlich ★★★ 6

120fps may be the future of documentaries, of sports, of porn, but it ain't the future of scripted entertainment. God bless Ang Lee for trying, but it feels like fast-forward. the hyper-reality highlights the artifice. the hyper-clarity of the 4K resolution (and the mega-lamberts of light or whatever) certainly enhances the 3D, but it does little to serve the drama. in short, the myth of total cinema strikes again, and this time it feels like it's happening right in front of your eyes.
oh… the movie? the movie is fine, i guess. Flags of Our Fathers for the NFL era. a lot of miscalculated performances (poor Steve Martin), but the kid and his curiously characterized love interest are both legit,…
Review by sydney ★★★★ 2

baby-faced men fighting a war they barely understand, waged by businessmen in boardrooms who have no idea what anything beyond numbers really means, protecting a civilian world they come home to find they don't fit in anymore...a story that's been told thousands of times, but we apparently haven't learned any lessons from it, so it will need to be told again and again until we do, i suppose. at first i thought the high frame rate was a bizarre choice for this kind of drama, but it makes things look so real that they aren't real anymore, more high-def than mere human eyes can handle, a world you are totally immersed in but can't connect with on a visceral level,…
Review by Evan ★★★½

This was really bizarre, but I kind of dug it? Ang Lee is definitely one of the most ambitious and ground-breaking directors out there. I have never seen anything quite like Billy Lynn's Halftime Walk.
Review by David Sims ★★★ 3

just too deeply weird to be mad at
Review by josh lewis ★★★

"dirk diggler, hell yeah"
Review by <Todd> ★★★

"the exchange of force with the intent to kill... that's a life changing experience" - David Dime,
I haven't fought for my country so I can't really speak to the accuracy of a movie like this. I can say that it is one of the more unique films about soldiers that I have seen and it appears to be a sincere effort to honor soldiers roles while also problematizing war and privileged Americans' understanding of it. The film is a little uneven and hokey at times but gets at a number of important issues. I like the way Lee creates a disorienting feel for the soldiers in America, doing his best to give some insight into the terrors of PTSD. It also effectively gets at how being a soldier becomes a bit of a master identity that people have trouble escaping even when they would like to do so.
It's special in many ways but painfully mediocre in others.
Review by Stevie ★ 1

Kristen Stewart made money off the Iraq War.
Review by Jared ★★★½

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is above all a tremendously sad film. Soldiers marketed as products of heroism to serve a goal that ultimately works to their detriment. The very thing they sacrifice their lives for delivered to the pupulace as a commercialized, vile excuse for the public to shove the challenging morality of war under the carpet with a simple "I support the troops!". Ang Lee's latest effort was bogged down by his curious decision to film this at 120 fps, and to be honest I'm not quite sure it achieved anything aside from heightening the discomfort. He also seems to try as hard as possible to distract from the central narrative, stupidly including distractingly fake football teams and…
Review by matt lynch ★★½

Overwhelmingly pat, kind of a surprise from Lee, although I wonder if he's been sliding that way for a while. I did like the upside down DOUBLE JEOPARDY video box in the early scene at Billy's house. Way to get ahead of me with the snappy letterboxd blurb Ang.
Review by Kevin Jones ★½

2016 Ranked
Fashioned as an Awards favorite entering 2016, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk promised innovative technology in the form of 120fps and 4k, while being helmed by Ang Lee. Coming off of Life of Pi, one had to assume that this film would be Lee's triumphant war film to add to his resume. Unfortunately, it is an absolutely abhorrent film. Perhaps watching it on a television sells it a bit short without the technology, but the 120fps feels like it was nothing more than a band-aid, covering up the gaping and infected wound that is the script. The acting is equally horrible, but the film is akin to the Star Wars prequels. It has a script so bad that…
Review by Tasha Robinson ★★★½

It's a little astonishing how this movie got buried this year, seemingly under a wave of indifference over the subject matter and discomfort over the 120fps experiment that so few people even saw. I feel like the baby got thrown out with the bathwater here. There are some deeply aggravating things about this movie, like the characters' tendency to deliver sincere speeches into the camera, laying out too much of their emotion and their themes. It's always a delight to see Steve Martin, but his character here is painfully on-the-nose. And Kristen Stewart's character is barely a character, she's a plot function, and a not particularly well conceived one. But when the film focuses on Billy's first-person experiences, his attempts to reconcile his current experiences with his past ones, and his desire with his duty and his friendships, this is a deeply passionate and heartfelt film.
Review by will ★★★★★

hundred grands a lot of money.
sensible ideas on how to spend it?
―probably help pay down my sister's medical bills.
i can't think of many films i'd identify first and foremost as american, but ang lee's ambitious HFR picture billy lynn is deeply rooted in the material contradictions with and throughout the fantasy of the american identity. a film not only about the making of a film, but the many other exploitative extrapolations there-of -- the tragedy beyond the war itself, circa the 21st century american imperialist invasion of the middle east. traumatized by the realities of sending inexperienced, uneducated young men to invade another country's soil and kill their peoples, they are left in this constant state of…

Recent reviews

Review by BBLemon ★★★★

This is a good movie that got buried under the discourse of 120fps format.
Review by 7opless ★★★

I will say this is an interesting take on a young man coming home from war and experiencing how weird America can be with its treatment of soldiers. They become props as opposed to people with their own stories to tell.
I respect Ang Lee’s direction for this story but it left me wanting more. The hyper realism of the war scenes and the almost fever dream direction the football stadium scenes set up an interesting dichotomy but it just made me wish that the story itself was stronger.
Review by Joe DiBella ★★

This is a bizarre one. Mixed on recommending it because the story is so crazy and baffling but it’s also basically pointless to watch this at home when the entire point was to see it in a theater with the correct frame-rate. I kept forgetting Vin Diesel was in this so every twenty minutes when he popped up I was surprised (what a fun treat for me) Crazy the cast includes Steve Martin, Tim Blake Nelson, Chris Tucker, Vin and Arturo Castro and everyone is completely wasted despite giving it their all. The entire Destiny’s Child performance was like some bad Zemeckis stuff.
Review by Ignacio de Elias ★★★½

Tremenda película
3.5/5
Review by Godzilla95 ★★★

Interesting on a technical and thematic level but is otherwise a pretty clunky drama.
I watched this on the 4k blu ray which runs at 60 FPS (the cinema release ran at 120) which gives the film a "hyper real" visual style that takes a bit getting used to. Once you're used to it though the results are nothing short of incredible. It gives the film an added layer of "you're there" immersion which is particularly relevant in the Iraq set scenes. The films one battle scene is scarily immersive and has a visceral power that really has to be seen to be believed. But I feel the film undermines the realistic visuals by including a lot of very artsy…
Review by Alex Bagnara ★★

Had this on my DVD.com list for a while because of the Blank Check episode about it. Guess I hadn't moved it down in a while so I finally got it.
This seems like an interesting choice for Ang Lee's first attempt at working with high frame rate. Obviously I don't have the set up that Lee might have hoped I had for this one, but it is noticeable how clean the visuals are in this. It isn't all that special really, Diesel (my man) shows up for sure. But is there a movie he doesn't give his all for?
Review by Justin Davila ★★★

Ang Lee's critique of modern Americana through the eyes of a PTSD soldier is weighed down by its awkward schmaltz, but still manages to have real intensity on and off the battlefield.
Review by mikethehuman ★★½

Bizarre
Review by vivien ★★½

head empty just joe alwyn and kstew
Review by dezvous ★★

This takes some super bizarre turns and ultimately I don't think it's a very good movie but I actually think the 60fps helps increase the effectiveness for several key moments. The video fidelity is stunning in 4k60 and it really highlights the more subtle things like tiny facial movements and trembling hands that are easier to convey to such a fine degree with more than double the temporal resolution.
VFX Tangent: 60fps doesn't make a bad movie good nor would it make a good movie bad. It's just another option or tool that can be used to help convey a story. To think that higher framerates have no place in movies seems very clearly closed minded and downright foolish. I'm…
Review by PACHA 100tos ★½

Película sobre la ocupación de EEUU en Irak, que al querer quedar bien con todos (para no herir sensibilidades), termina resultando tibia, y aburrida y chata. El film nos quiere decir que está en contra de la guerra en Irak, pero reivindica a los jóvenes soldados que están allá luchando por sus convicciones patrióticas. Y porque, después de todo, son un grupo de chicos bien americanos, leales a sus cumpitas, que se cuidan unos a otros. Kristen Stewart es lo único rescatable, a pesar de interpretar un personaje tan cuadrado y unidimensional. FLOJA
Review by msmith9873 ★★★

Let’s go get a middle school named after us!