50
Metascore
7 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 70The New YorkerPauline KaelThe New YorkerPauline KaelThere's a sweet, naive feeling to the movie even when it's violent and melodramatic and atrocious, and when it's good it's good in an unorthodox, improvisatory style.
- 63Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertThere are a lot of things in Billy Jack that are seriously conceived and very well-handled. Some of the scenes at the school, for example, with real kids experimenting with psychodrama, are interesting. Some of the action scenes are first-rate. But the movie has as many causes in it as a year's run of the New Republic.
- 50The DissolveNathan RabinThe DissolveNathan RabinBilly Jack is a film of violent contradictions. It is a fortysomething über-square’s tribute to the promise and potential of the hippies, as well as an intensely violent homage to non-violence.
- The whole picture nicely conveys a Southwestern atmosphere. But much too often, at the cost of plain credibility, it stacks its cards, characters and even credo like any rootin', tootin' Western.
- 40Time OutTime OutA down market youth pic with Laughlin as the half-breed Vietnam veteran who stands up for America's misunderstood youth and operates a sort of one-man Countryside Commission.
- 25TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineThe material played upon all the best aspects of the socially conscious movements of the 1960s, and then perverted them by preaching that violence is indeed the solution to problems as long as it's for the right cause.