Billy Jack Goes To Washington (1977)

The plain truth about people who want to be heroes is, sad to say, they set their goals too high.

Think about it; they want to save all of humanity, but look at all that's wrong with humanity to being with. We're all prone to the sins that have plagued us since time began, and what's worse, it's hard to fight against greed, immorality and murder when they've had so much staying power through the millenia than good. Heck, they get more mention in The Bible, too.

So, what about heroes? How in the world can people who don't have superhuman morals, incredible strength and/or the ability to fly stand a chance against evil? It would, in fact, take someone who has a most outstanding human fiber and is, in a word, incorruptable.

Thank goodness that humanity has one of its own to protect it from every last single evil that befalls it...with bare feet and a black hat.

Tom Laughlin would never be classified as a shrinking violet. Rather, he has always been identified with his durable alter ego Billy Jack; a half-indian West Point graduate, who was also an ex-Green Beret karate expert that employed kicks, karate chops, guns and brute force to further the rights of all the world's youthful pacifists.

Yes, you read that last sentence right. He was killing humanity to make mankind safer for it. That's a Green Beret for you.

Billy Jack would begin life as a main player in the film Born Losers, which became a grass roots hit as he defeated a whole motorcycle gang using all the above-mentioned tactics. This proved so successful, in fact, that he would return in other successes like Billy Jack and The Trial of Billy Jack, where he would continue his peace-through-violence ways with a bit more American Indian philosophy and existentialism thrown into the mix. A small oeuvre of films, to be sure, and if he'd had more money, he surely would have made more. He always funded his own films, wrote them, directed them and distributed them. He did it all, and kicked tail and took names.

In fact, it seemed there was nothing that Laughlin (as Billy Jack) could not do, save for one thing: and that is hold a seat as Senator.

In the film Billy Jack Goes To Washington, never before has the far-fetched or contrived taken such a foothold in a story as they have here. In Washington DC, a Senator falls ill on the Senate floor and later dies, having fought against a nuclear plant bill in his homestate. The Governor of the Senator's state (Dick Gautier), makes a bold move in appointing a man who would bring to their party the voting clout of the young and minorities (especially American Indians, no doubt) - Billy Jack, who was already a previously-convicted murderer and had waged a protective assault against the National Guard. Good appointment there, Governor. But hey, just reverse his convictions and all's right with the world, eh?

But just a minute; not all is as cut-and-dried as that. It turns out that as the naive Billy trots his way to DC with long-time female friend Delores (Delores Taylor) and an entourage of teenagers (they'd probably be classified as hippies, if this weren't the mid-70s), things are being orchestrated by a corrupt Senator (E.G. Marshall), a political puppet master (Sam Wanamaker) and a whole Congress full of greedy, corrupt pawns of Big Business © to get him to glide by without noticing anything sinister or doing anything to undermine their backroom wheeling and dealing. In fact, the only one willing to help him (in all of DC, I guess) is his appointed secretary (Lucie Arnaz, in her "big" debut), who hints him into how bills are passed, who can and can't be trusted and so on.

Once Billy Jack catches wind of what's going on, he goes on a one-man crusade against all that is greed and corporate in DC and takes charge of the Senate floor in a week-long filibuster, doing everything politically possible to make his voice heard and his opinion count, if just to fight for "the little guy".

Now, if bits and pieces of this sounds familiar so far, then congratulations; you must have already seen Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, which starred Jimmy Stewart and was directed by Frank Capra. In fact, there is only one difference between these respective films. Stewart's Mr. Smith is good. Other than that, in spite of a couple of different scenes shoved in here and there, Billy Jack Goes To Washington is a scene-for-scene remake of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. But for a film that cost over $7 million to make, you'd think they would have thrown in some quality along with the excess.

For as single-minded and jingoistic as Billy Jack and The Trial of Billy Jack were, they at least had a main character that was somewhat smart, employed his martial arts rather well and tackled various youth-minded topics in his films like ecology, violence, pacifism, the handicapped, racism, etc. But just so it wouldn't feel like preaching and moralizing, this message was all delivered by our man BJ, who would kick, chop, beat down, blow up and otherwise discombobulate the dumb, paunchy white men who would make life miserable for the people in BJ's hometown. So it was all okay, you see: this was an action movie, first and foremost, with the other stuff thrown in just to give the viewer a toehold in social reality and maybe enlighten them.

You know, like Steven Seagal in On Deadly Ground. Or...maybe that's too good of an example.

But therein lies the problem with BJGTW; you see BJ's name in the title and you expect a knock-down, drag-out, no-punches-pulled, fist-first attack on every stupid, overfed bureaucrat on Capitol Hill, like in that episode of "The Simpsons" where Mel Gibson remade Mr. Smith only to have his filibuster scene turned into a bloodbath as he killed every last senator on the floor. But alas, Laughlin is far too enlightened to take this more enjoyable approach. Instead, he dumbs down Billy Jack to the point of infancy then only gives him ONE FIGHT SCENE in the whole *113-or-so minutes of the whole movie. The rest of the movie is him speaking and moving very slowly and talking when he should be a' shootin' and a 'punchin'. But the painful thing about that is, when you watch the big fight scene, you can plainly see where a stunt double is doing BJ's kicks and jumps and big physical exertion scenes for him. If you recall Laughlin's previous film The Master Gunfighter, you'll have noticed that he gained a considerable amount of weight therein. He still has it here, and it shows as he employs long shots and props in front of BJ's midsection to hide his paunch. Maybe he was planning a sequel: Billy Jack Goes To The Fat Farm.

In the case of BJGTW, the facts aren't merely "played with"; if anything, they're stretched out and repeated and over-expounded so often that they're run into the ground long after the viewer understood them. Yeah, Washington DC is corrupt and the Senate is full of corrupt Senators. This point was made back in Capra's film; the sentiment this time around is to exploit the Watergate paranoia that still hung in the air since Nixon's impeachment. That's all fine, but then why base your movie on a previous film that was a COMEDY?? Oh, and not that BJGTW isn't funny; it is, but somehow I don't think it's in a way that Laughlin even intended. Instead of making a light-hearted romp (which is probably beyond Laughlin's grasp), most of this film's $7 million budget was spent on building a replica of the Senate Floor and to secure good actors like Marshall and Wanamaker. Then they just xeroxed the script for Mr. Smith, wrote in a couple of new scenes and hoped for the best.

As with any Billy Jack film, this one touches on hot-button topics (nuclear power, the environment, government corrpution, a racial card that's almost played but then thrown away just as quickly as it's introduced), and yet it feels all padded-out with Arnaz describing in great detail how goverment bills are introduced then passed in session. And what's with that pompous, fife-and-drum score intro with spacious travelougue shots of downtown D.C.? Laughlin is more interested with beautiful shots of luxurious locales than the meat-and-potatoes storytelling he began with. Used to be that he celebtated uniqueness and simple decency above "The Man's" wealth and clout. Here, "The Man" never looked better. Then again, that's progress for you.

If anything, Billy Jack Goes To Washington doesn't make the viewer want to stand up against corruption; it makes them want to watch Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. And that's probably for the best, anyway.

* = The original version of BJGTW is supposed to be a little over two-and-a-half hours long; the version I watched was barely two. There was a "conspiracy", let's call it, where after its premiere an unnamed senator angrily declared to Laughlin that this movie would never be seen. And soon after, that crucial half-hour of film came up missing (the studio claimed it didn't know what happened to it, 'natch). It would be fun to one day find that the missing half-hour of film was at the same place that the missing few minutes of Nixon's Watergate tapes ended up. But maybe Laughlin's saving an idea like that for a long-delayed sequel.

...God, I hope not.