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The United States vs. Billie Holiday Movie Review

The United States vs. Billie Holiday is a 2021 biographical film directed by Lee Daniels and starring Andra Day. It’s a very mediocre, but superbly acted film.

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“You know, the people that are

hardest on me are my own race.

I need help, not jail time“

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The Federal Bureau of Narcotics launches an undercover sting operation against jazz singer Billie Holiday. The movie did teach me about this famous singer whom I honestly never heard of before watching this movie, so at least it is valuable as a historical lesson, but that’s pretty much the only good thing I can see say about this movie besides the acting.

Lee Daniels has never been a particularly good director and this is by far one of his worst movies. The execution is very off-putting in that he unsuccessfully attempted to cover so much ground, but he rushed all of the major plot points, resulting in a messy film that is horribly paced and overall very amateurish in structure and direction that is basically directionless if you ask me.

What Daniels did here is basically introduce one great performance and character arc and the rest he did not try to elevate whatsoever, hoping that Day will carry the entire movie on her shoulders. That never happened. Yes, she’s amazing, but even she couldn’t save this movie from feeling pointless, repetitive and simply boring throughout.

Andra Day is a singer first and foremost and this is her first major acting role, which brought her a Golden Globe win and an Academy Award nomination. It’s impressive what she accomplished for such an early role in her career, but she deserved the accolades as her work here is tremendous. She plays this famous singer with so much force, nuance and genuine care and empathy as she put a lot of work into every scene with her facial expressions and voice being particularly memorable.

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The United States vs. Billie Holiday is weaker in other personalities. It was nice seeing Trevante Rhodes as he was mostly missing after his big turn in ‘Moonlight’, but the character isn’t particularly memorable. The movie starts off okay, but then it veers into entirely uninteresting, dull territory with no message and themes whatsoever. Daniels has nothing to say here.