The Trial of Billy Jack

Goofy, self-indulgent, poorly acted folly; original, impassioned work of political (and financial) courage. The duality of Billy Jack. Flashing back within a flashback, an on-trial BJ recounts a My Lai-type massacre he refused to participate in (which I guess kind of undercuts the artistic courage), then explains that Nixon's refusal to hold accountable the perpetrators of the actual My Lai (and the insufficient public backlash) convinced him that the soul of America is dead and can't be revived. Then there is the student massacres: Orangeburg, Kent State, Jackson State, all invoked by name (and text in the opening montage, with dead and wounded listed), and a subplot directly inspired by Nader's Raiders (writer/director/star Tom Laughlin once really, actually said that America's children have but two heroes: Ralph Nader and Billy Jack), where the kids in Billy Jack's utopian alternative school set out to expose all manner of malfeasance, angering the local power structure. And also there is a delirious vision quest sequence, where Billy Jack painted all-red is confronted by Billy Jack painted all-blue, his "inner self" who says some stuff about some stuff, and another subplot involving the schoolkids' efforts to revolutionize the rehabilitation of severely abused children, and then of course many roundhouse kicks to the face in slow motion.

So, a dizzying three-hour mess, although much of the confusion is in fact the film's thematic material: the numerous lengthy, unresolved dialogue sequences involving conflicting theories of pedagogy and approaches to resistance are about the most faithful filmic example I know of internecine conflict in progressive movements, and could be said to represent something of a true dialectical approach. The concluding carnage: the state sublates.