Billy Jack (1971)
(On Cable TV, March 2019) It’s interesting to look at the list of top-grossing movies of decades past and see a few surprises in there. Billy Jack, while somewhat forgotten today, was an interesting blockbuster hit. Its production history and release remain singular, as actor-writer-director-producer Tom Laughlin resurrected his Billy Jack character from The Born Losers and made a movie that he then distributed himself, eventually ranking in significant profits from a low-budget film. Little of this would have worked had the film itself been less interesting. But Billy Jack itself is this weirdly compelling mixture of native-American revindications, vigilantism in the service of pacifism and a martial-arts expert protagonist proudly affirming his Navajo roots. Even executed in grimy low-budget quasi-amateurish fashion, it does have a certain straightforward appeal. Beyond the dull-toned narration, it shows a clear underdog story in which free-spirited (yet violently competent) hippies and Native American face off against square whites. It’s hard not to cheer for the oppressed heroes even as they face caricatures—the council scene is bad enough! The exploitation intent of the result makes it that we’re not supposed to care about the profoundly hypocritical message of preaching pacifism in the middle of an all-out escalation of violence … and that’s how it goes: Billy Jack may grapple with the notion of pacifism in the face of violence, but never comes close to being willing to provide an answer. Laughlin does deliver a very likable performance, even if he’s not exactly a good actor and everyone surrounding him fares even worse. For all of the quirky interest of the film, though, it’s hard not to link it to trends that would emerge later, both in cinema and in society: not only as a prototype for the transformation of New Hollywood into the popular blockbuster release by the late 1970s, but also the rise of Native American activism throughout the 1970s, including the Wounded Knee standoff of 1973. Billy Jack is definitely a curio no matter how you look at it, and an interesting film in its own right.