I saw this many years ago when it first came out. I had previously enjoyed BILLY JACK for what it was, an interesting little action picture with a leftist political conscience. So I thought I knew what to expect with this one.
But nothing prepared me for the sheer, mind-boggling bombast of auteur Tom Laughlin's magnum opus. The simplistic political ideas he espouses in this example of wretched excess make Michael Moore and Leni Reifenstahl look like amateurs.
You know the old joke about how you have to get the mule's attention by first clobbering him over the head with a two-by-four? Well, Laughlin feels the necessity to pound that poor mule right into the ground with a pile driver until it's in a hole so deep you can see China on the other side. Subtlety, ambiguity, ambivalence, even the possibility of their being two sides to any issue are concepts that have no place in his universe.
If you're the type who believes that the world is a place of Black and White, Good and Evil, with zero shading between, then you may be able to stomach this film. But let all others beware.
But nothing prepared me for the sheer, mind-boggling bombast of auteur Tom Laughlin's magnum opus. The simplistic political ideas he espouses in this example of wretched excess make Michael Moore and Leni Reifenstahl look like amateurs.
You know the old joke about how you have to get the mule's attention by first clobbering him over the head with a two-by-four? Well, Laughlin feels the necessity to pound that poor mule right into the ground with a pile driver until it's in a hole so deep you can see China on the other side. Subtlety, ambiguity, ambivalence, even the possibility of their being two sides to any issue are concepts that have no place in his universe.
If you're the type who believes that the world is a place of Black and White, Good and Evil, with zero shading between, then you may be able to stomach this film. But let all others beware.