There'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.

There 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.

Screenplay attempts to encompass too many story facets. Result is that the action frequently drags.

Billy 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.