The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
A bluesy jazz
Star Andra Day shines, but Hulu’s ‘The United States vs. Billie Holiday’ can’t quite find a steady rhythm
Given all the talent involved with “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” it is borderline-shocking the film so rarely grabs you and pulls you into what should be an entirely compelling story based on real events.
Landing on Hulu this week, the film — a biopic of the beloved late jazz singer that’s largely interested in her drug addiction and how the government used it to keep her from singing a powerful protest song — should be a can’t-miss affair.
And singer-actress Andra Day does her part in the starring role, pouring her various gifts into a vision of Billie who is complex but relatable, talented but tragic.
However, the nearest thing Day has to a costar in this ensemble cast, “Moonlight” star Trevante Rhodes, fails to make much of an impression as a federal agent charged with getting close to Billie to nail her with possession of illegal narcotics.
Behind the camera, director Lee Daniels rarely is able to push the emotional buttons he did in 2009’s “Precious” and 2013’s “Lee Daniels’ The Butler.” And given “Billie Holiday” is penned by playwright Suzan-Lori Parks — the first
Black woman to earn the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, for 2001’s “Topdog/Underdog” — you’d think that wouldn’t be a problem.
It’s not as if the film isn’t worth watching; Day’s performance and its subject matter are enough to spend two hours of your time on it. Too often, though, the work feels surprisingly aimless, like a pleasantly mellow piece of jazz.
Loosely structured with Lady Day, late in her career, looking back 10 years and then moving chronologically, “Billie Holiday” establishes early on that the government is determined to keep her from publicly performing “Strange Fruit.” That’s because the song — the lyrics of which include “Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze/ Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees” — rails against the lynchings of Blacks. (The film opens with text stating that a bill to ban the lynching of African-Americans was considered by the U.S. Senate
in 1937. “It did not pass.”)
The movie’s villain is Harry J. Anslinger (Garrett Hedlund of “Mudbound”), who for many years led the U.S. Treasury Department’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a precursor to the Drug Enforcement Agency, and who believes he can catch Billie with drugs. He tasks ambitious agent Jimmy Fletcher (Rhodes) with earning her trust so they can bust her, so Jimmy, posing as a journalist and admirer, makes himself seen regularly at a club where Billie sings.
Billie doesn’t have the greatest history with picking
men, and she does choose to trust Jimmy — initially and again later down the line after knowing quite well what he really does for a living.
We get sketches of Billie’s other relationships, including eventual husband Louis McKay (Rob Morgan, also of “Mudbound”) and the briefly seen actress Tallulah Bankhead (Natasha Lyonne,”Russian Doll”). However, the emphasis is on her meaningful time spent with Jimmy, whose attitudes toward both her and his job evolve over the course of the film.