Lions for Lambs tells three, loosely interlocking stories about the War on Terror. Like other recent films concerning topical and current events it is something less than compelling or thought-provoking. Similar to Rendition from a few weeks ago, you get the distinct feeling that despite the good intentions of the filmmakers, the movie is only going to preach to the choir, and at that without the finer details that make real world issues so ill-defined and debatable.



An undergrad student in a Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts rides up to the faculty office building at his fancy California university. This is Todd (Andrew Garfield), and he’s having an early morning meeting with his professor Dr. Malley (Robert Redford). Malley’s point is to ask why his most gifted student is now only a passive participant in lectures and debates. Todd says that he’s become disenfranchised with the process; politics has just become too muddled with so much crap that people can’t see the forest for the tress, so what’s the point of trying?



In one fowl swoop, director Redford and screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan, use one-third of the movie to browbeat the young whippersnappers for not being out on the street en mass protesting this mess. True, apathy is what’s keeping the youth vote from putting their hands in the ballot box but these just tell everybody what they already know. Yes, kids today don’t seem to care about the process, but how do we change that, is the question. What is having this conversation for the millionth time going to do?



Also, interestingly, there were a group of high school aged kids behind me at the screening and all they did throughout the movie was talk, go the bathroom and visit the concession stand. Pity, I think this was aimed squarely at them.



Story two deals with a pair of Malley’s former students. He remembers them as not particularly gifted pupils, but ones who were eager to learn and had a lot to offer. Ernest (Michael Pena) and Arian (Derek Luke) end up enrolling in the army, over the objections of Malley, who nonetheless supported their decision to go. They’re now stationed in Afghanistan and are part of a new operation to sweep out al-Quada and Taliban fighters from a disputed region. But the mission goes wrong and Ernest and Arian are left wounded, on their own, surrounded by the approaching enemy.



This is the least convincing and the least satisfying story of the trinity. It’s contrived and clichéd, even for a soldiers in peril story which has been done to death a thousand times (no pun intended). The point of the other two stories is debate, to test the party lines and talk about the core and causes of these dilemmas we’ve dug for ourselves, but how to argue against soldiers fighting for their lives in the bitter cold. This storyline was the least believable and it ended in way that I think was really sending the wrong kind of message to the viewers it was aiming to talk to.



The third story has to do with an interview between a reporter (Meryl Streep) and a highly place Republican senator (Tom Cruise) who’s helping to direct this new strategy being carried out by soldiers in Afghanistan. (Ironically, it’s the very mission that Ernest and Arian are wounded on.) The reporter and the senator go back and forth on the issues inherent with this new offensive and the greater war effort, but the reporter can easily tell that the Emperor has no clothes. The question is though, will she be able to take the story forward or will it get buried by corporate medalling?



I think is really the heart and soul of the story, the acting from both megastars simmers just right until it’s ready to boil. Cruise doesn’t get enough props for being the decent actor that he is. His holier-than-thou performance of Sen. Irving is spot on: smarmy, condescending, but with the slightest hint that he’s not even buying his own kool-aid. The scenes are not without problems though. Exactly how is a Senator so intricately involved in military planning? And if Streep is a TV reporter why did she come to Irving’s office alone, without a camera, but armed with a notepad and pen? Still though, it is the most satisfying entry.



The unfortunate problem of Lions for Lambs is that it really should have been a stage play more than a film. It’s talkie more than anything, just scenes upon scenes of people sitting around talking. Now I don’t normally consider that a problem, but the film could have been spiced up with a little more movement; not action necessarily, but just movement. Having said that though, I was sufficiently intrigued to follow where the story was going but by the time the credits rolled I was more disappointed than enlightened. I can’t say that I was angry about it, but I was just left wanting.



I admire Redford’s intentions with the film, but I think he should have asked himself some important questions. What am I trying to say in this movie? Who am I trying to say it to? And am I telling people what they already know?