Redacted. Rendition. In the Valley of Elah. The Kingdom. Lions for Lambs. Grace is Gone. This year seems determined to be the year of the Iraq War film, and Robert Redford's new political "thriller" is the perfect example of what separates a good film, such as Paul Haggis' Elah, from a mediocre film. And, make no mistake, Lions for Lambs is a fantastically mediocre film.
The triple story revolves mostly around Meryl Streep as a journalist interviewing a U.S. senator played by Tom Cruise. They discuss the senator's new plan of action in Afghanistan as we the audience watch the effects of that strategy on two young soldiers trapped on a mountain top. Redford shows up as a professor lecturing an intelligent but lazy student with misplaced values. It is all handled very matter-of-factly, which is a nice way of saying that it is boring beyond belief. What we have is a story of political intrigue that forgets to be intriguing or even entertaining. And, in the absence of the former, the absence of the latter is unforgivable.
Writer Matthew Michael Carnahan takes the easy way out at every opportunity, and instead of engaging the audience in an intelligent, important conversation, he gives us a one sided lecture on righteousness and morality. The complexity of the issue is completely sapped away, and we are left with good guys on white horses and bad guys so simply drawn that they may as well be wearing funny hats. The writing in this film is so terribly pointed that no one in the audience gets to have a thought. Every idea is hammered home so incessantly that any subtlety or intelligence that may have been there is bled completely dry.
This is the first film for the new Tom Cruise-helmed United Artists, and for his first feature, Cruise picked the kind of high-minded, liberal (not usually a dirty word but here a slur), prestige picture that seems meant only to win awards. That is not necessarily a bad thing, depending upon your perspective, and this film had every chance to prove itself worthy of winning those oh-so coveted awards. However, it seems like a lot of talented people brought their B-game to a C-movie.
Robert Redford does what he can with the little he is given, but there is a problem when the best thing about a movie is that it clocks in at under an hour and a half. This picture is truly cringe-worthy. It plays like a Berkeley film student's senior thesis: pseudo-radical ideology made blatantly obvious by a lack of interesting set pieces and a lot of people shouting without saying anything. Sadly, what the whole endeavor boils down to is ham-handed propagandizing that seeks not to understand and interpret but to proselytise and convert.
See it?
No.
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