The United States vs Billie Holiday

The FBI's obsession with Strange Fruit ... Music from the devil ... War Against Drugs ... Reluctance to give up lynching ... Un-American activities ... All that jazz ... Hoover on the case ... Miss Lumière at the cinema

Holiday: hounded by Hoover

As if we didn't already know: J. Edgar Hoover has a lot to answer for, including hounding one of the greatest of all jazz singers to her untimely death, aged 44.

The United States vs Billie Holiday is a timely, if confused reminder of America's crude racist underpinning, in this instance successfully prosecuted by agents of the bug-eyed, cross-dressing, mother-lovin' FBI chief.

The film is based on Johann Hari's book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, which examined the role of real-life FBI agents Harry J. Anslinger and new black recruit Jimmy Fletcher (a hunky Trevante Rhodes) in bringing down Billie Holiday.

What a fall. Although, as we learn, Billie all but crawled her way out of the gutter (a Harlem brothel) on the husky chords of her stunning vocal talent.

Along the way, she picked up some bad men and some equally bad habits - booze, heroin and the blues.

In particular, the FBI wants Billie to stop singing Strange Fruit, Time Magazine's "song of the century" because it describes (rather lyrically it must be said) lynching, a practice the film informs us was still not banned in 2020.

In 1947 when the main action begins, lynching is very much in vogue in the south, and Anslinger (Garrett Hedund) wants to keep it that way - "jazz is the devil's music" - by getting Billie arrested as part of the US government's "war against drugs". 

She's a soft target and spends a year in prison before returning "clean" to a sell-out concert in front of a mixed-race audience at Carnegie Hall.

Hoover and his henchmen are ever more driven to root out such "un-American" activity. 

Director Lee Daniels (Monster's Ball, Precious) has rich historical material to mine, but seems uncertain whether he's making a biopic, a docu-drama, a political thriller or a love story.

A hokey script by Susan Lori-Parks doesn't help, nor does the schmaltzy musical score (Billie's incandescent songs aside).

Stylistically and structurally The United States vs Billie Holiday is a chien's breakfast (we even see a few of those involving Billie's own pampered pooches) albeit one not quite saved by a thrilling central performance.

Singer-songwriter Andra Day as Billie is a force to be reckoned with, chewing up the celluloid with her reckless intensity and physicality. 

It's no surprise Day was nominated for best actress in a leading role across the awards spectrum. She missed out on the Academy Award, but won a Golden Globe. 

As Billie, she's a bona fide firecracker, both raw and vulnerable, burning life at both ends, injecting heroin in the middle and making all the wrong decsions.

"I sing what de fuck I want," she spits at her sleazy manager, whom she later, unwisely marries. 

There's subterfuge (Jimmy goes undercover to get her arrested), love, violence, sex and drugs (sometimes simultaneously) and sheer nastiness (the FBI arresting and handcuffing her for heroin possession on her hospital deathbed) aplenty.

But that's not what makes The United States vs Billie Holiday watchable. 

It's the music, stupid.