Review of Billy Jack (1971) by Sheila W — 01 Jan 2013

Writer & director Tom Laughlin's contemporary melodrama BILLY JACK qualifies as a flawed but provocative film. The cult history of this epic and its success at the box office don't prepare us for what we wind up.

Initially, "Billy Jack" looked like a Charles Bronson revenge movie without Bronson. Here's a brave, resourceful fellow who is half-white and half-Native American. He lives on a reservation, and he practices a bizarre form of martial arts called hapkido.

Billy Jack saves a herd of horses from being massacred and manufactured into dog food. He is courting the defiant but plain-Jane looking Jean Roberts (Delores Taylor) who operates a 'Freedom School' on the reservation.

The abused daughter of a local lawman takes refuge in the school. Meantime, the chief villain's degenerate son rapes Roberts, and an angry Billy Jack goes after them. The skits that the school practices could have been left on the editing room floor.

Basically, despite an occasion close-quarters combat scene, BILLY JACK is both crude but entertaining nonsense.