LIONS FOR LAMBS (2007) ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Robert Redford
Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise,
Andrew Garfield, Michael Pena, Derek Luke
In Washington, D.C., an ambitious Republican senator (Tom Cruise) calls on a veteran TV reporter (Meryl Streep) for an exclusive one-on-one interview whose real purpose is to build public support for a new military offensive in Afghanistan. In California, a political science professor (Robert Redford) meets with a promising student (Andrew Garfield) who has stopped showing up for class. In Afghanistan, two of Redford's former students (Michael Pena and Derek Luke) find themselves pinned down in a firefight - the first skirmish in the campaign Senator Cruise is out to promote. In some ways, this isn't a movie as much as it is a dramatized debate. Cruise speaks entirely in empty, artfully crafted euphemisms. His encounter with Streep isn't really a conversation. It's an exchange of broadsides between two characters whose views, and the words used to express them, are dialed in. The scenes between Redford and Garfield are more interesting, the smart, young, 21st-century underachiever playing rhetorical dodgeball with an aging '60s warrior who hasn't lost his idealism, but can sense that he's starting to lose touch. It might be a little too earnest, but at least it's a film that tries to take on complex issues with something like complex thought.
