‘The United States vs Billie Holiday’ is a Train Wreck Brought to You by Lee Daniels [Review]

Lee Daniels has given us a towering disappointment with “The United States vs Billie Holiday.” Tackling the drug-fueled days of the legendary jazz singer, Daniels’ treatise on the final years of the legend’s life can only be the bomb that it is by being so ambitiously and emotionally conceived — the writer-director of “Precious” and “The Paper Boy” gloriously swings for the fence and misses. The result is damn-near unwatchable.

Holiday (passionately played by Andra Day) was a target of the Feds, brought up on drug charges and continuously stalked by establishment forces post-release. The vehement hatred directed towards Holiday had to do with her insistence to play the anti-lynching song, “Strange Fruit.” Garrett Hedlund plays Harry Anslinger, the racist chief of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics who made it his mission to put her behind bars for the song. It turns out that Holiday fell for the same federal agent who had initially arrested her, Anslinger protegé, Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes). The misbegotten romance is tackled by Daniels with the kind of insincerity and lack of subtlety that only a clueless romanticist could accomplish.

Daniels should have focused more on Holiday’s brazen defiance in the face of a system trying to shut her down. Despite being minimally tackled, it’s the story behind “Strange Fruit” that becomes the film’s lone narrative strong point. Here was a song, incredibly confrontational, even for today’s world, that turned into a landmark in its depiction of lynching culture in the United States. Holiday would have her life threatened countless times if she were to play it, and she did. Daniels’ visual and narrative audacity summons up the power of “Strange Fruit” when Holiday finally performs it in the film’s finale. However, the rest of the film lacks the biting sting needed.

Here’s a film heralded by a strong lead performance that tries to do something different in its non-linear ways. The result is incoherence, a muddled mess of a film that doesn’t really know how to find its groove or footing in the name of its countless ambitions. Audacity is one thing, and competence is a whole other ball game. This film has plenty of the former and none of the latter.

SCORE: C-