Biography

The United States vs. Billie Holiday

BiographyDramaMusic

Follows Holiday during her career as she is targeted by the Federal Department of Narcotics with an undercover sting operation led by black Federal Agent Jimmy Fletcher, with whom she has a tumultuous affair.

Year

2021

Duration

2h 6m

IMDb

6.3

Trailer

Cast

Lee Daniels

Director

Andra Day

Billie Holiday

Trevante Rhodes

Jimmy Fletcher

Garrett Hedlund

Harry Anslinger

Leslie Jordan

Reginald Lord Devine

Miss Lawrence

Miss Freddy

Natasha Lyonne

Tallulah Bankhead

Dusan Dukic

Joe Glaser

Erik LaRay Harvey

James Monroe

Da'Vine Joy Randolph

Roslyn

Koumba Ball

Lucille

Kate MacLellan

Working Class Woman

Kwasi Songui

Working Class Man

Adriane Lenox

Mrs. Fletcher

Letitia Brookes

Velva

Tyler James Williams

Lester Young

W'

Warren 'Slim' Williams

Bobby Tucker

OT

Orville Thompson

Auditioning Sax Player

Jeff Corbett

Congressman JP Thomas

Suzan-Lori Parks

Writer

Johann Hari

Writer

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Comments

10 comments

Shristi KhadkaJul 16, 2024

lady dadzieJul 16, 2024

TiminiJul 16, 2024

Fatoumata COMARAMar 29, 2023

The movie is a bit slow at first but then it got me hooked up to it really fast. I loved andra day's performance so much. Everytime she sang, I felt it

Charles ClockworksMar 29, 2023

If you're a fan of Billy Holiday songs , this movie is for you! It's a very interesting part of Billy's life that personally I never knew. The Feds chasing her down for her amazing song "Strange Fruit". Billy is special to me since my Dad met her while she was performing at a jazz club. This is a great movie with Audra's performance as quite remarkable!

lakshmimanchuMar 29, 2023

Billie Holiday has been dead for more than 60 years and no one yet has managed to create a decent biographic film of her sad, squalid, and too-brief life. The first - and biggest problem - is a screenplay riddled with errors, inaccuracies, and clichés. As other have noted, it makes this unwatchable (I started to fast-forward about 90 minutes in). The production itself - despite its voyeuristic obsession with sex and violence - looks like it came from Disney. I feel disgusted to use this word, but it has been whitewashed beyond comprehension. Andra Day gives a credible performance and does an decent imitation of Holiday's voice, but it's all technique and no soul. I can speak with some authority on the disarray of her life: for 12 years I worked for the record company which owns the rights to a huge amount of her prime recordings, and the first that issued a 10-CD box when digital technology was new. I got caught up in the legal battles over the royalties to her recordings, a nasty, greedy affair by people who never met her, only adding another sad chapter to her legacy.

Saeed BhikhuMar 29, 2023

This is painful to watch. It feels like the Star Wars prequels. Its a forced experience. Interesting topic but terrible movie.

omaimouna2Mar 29, 2023

Andrea Day's amazing performance of a great character went to waste because of the director! Billie Holiday deserved a biopic not less than (Ray), they should've gave it to a great worthy director that would give it its rightfull justice. Lee Daniels cares about the racial stuff more than art & film making. Well he suck at both (this coming from an African person) Thank you Andra Day for your beautiful portrayal of a beautiful person.

Big Natty 🌠📸🥳Mar 29, 2023

Obviously they spent more of the budget on cigarettes & cheap wigs than on talent. Andra Day is a great singer & Lee Daniel's other work has been much better. What happened?

Jaime ConjoMar 29, 2023

The costumes and overall historical production design looks good, and Andra Day is great playing Billie Holiday, but otherwise "The United States vs. Billie Holiday" is a meandering, poorly-constructed biopic. That despite the reflexive framing of the story as a recorded interview that should've focused the narrative besides reflecting the audial sensation of Holiday's singing. Instead, we get a plot that often doesn't seem to be going anywhere besides from scene to scene of shooting up heroin, from concert to concert and abuse or sex scenes from man to man, with a hint of bisexuality. A wallowing, hot-mess portrait of Lady Day. All the while, cut occasionally to narcs planting evidence or saying something racist and inevitably being told off to presumed audience cheering. Even if the remembered scenes of Holiday's past as the black FBI agent follows her from a lynching through her upbringing in a brothel is almost effective, the montage covering again the aforementioned sort of scenes we've already seen several times in slight variations, plus some fight between two guys, certainly isn't. And to top it off there's that atonal, fourth-wall-breaking mid-credits scene after the requisite biopic text at the end to give us the Wikipedia headlines of what happened to the characters after the movie. Yet, Day is great, an actual singer who sings the part and in the imitated style of the character she's performing. Her reported weight loss and picking up of smoking and drinking for the part is some impressive dedication, too, even if she wisely didn't go to Nick Nolte levels of method acting in using heroin as he did for "The Good Thief" (2002). Day deserved better direction, the social commentary on civil rights deserved more than simplistic tropes, "Strange Fruit" better than "Tigress and Tweed," and Holiday a more focused biographical picture. I'll have to check out "Lady Sings the Blues" (1972), which stars Diana Ross and also received awards attention, someday for comparison.