"Lions for Lambs" movie review

This week we take a look at a big movie with quiet box office results so far: Lions For Lambs (PG-13). Robert Redford directs and costars as a college professor who taught two students now serving in Afghanistan. Another plot line shows Meryl Streep as a reporter interviewing a U.S. Senator (Tom Cruise) about the latest foreign policy attempt to win the war on terror.

Ryan: I was surprised at first with how Lions for Lambs has been under performing at the box-office. After all, the movie boasts a cast of legendary stars (Cruise, Streep and Redford). But after seeing the movie I can see why the film has not caught on with an audience. Make no mistake about it, Lions for Lambs is not a bad movie, in fact it is quite engaging at times, but overall the movie is one-sided (to the political left), slightly pretentious and overly preachy. Right away the movie is alienating a conservative audience. Most right-leaning moviegoers are probably going to dismiss the film as liberal propaganda, and while that is not completely accurate, there is some degree of truth to it.

Andy: Dismissing Lions for Lambs as lefty propaganda would be an easy thing to do, but I came away from the movie impressed on a variety of levels. It does seem a bit like its pandering at times (especially in the sequences featuring Redford), but it does not grossly oversimplify the issues as many movies do. It acknowledges the complexities the war on terror and attempts to look at it on three different levels (government, military, citizen). If there is an underlying message, it is that people should be more involved, or at the very least better informed, in the world politics our country is practicing, and it's hard to find fault with that claim.

Ryan: Not only is the movie not going to appeal to conservatives, I don't believe it's going to do much for liberals either. Regrettably the movie is a big let down because it doesn't bring anything new to the table. It adds nothing fresh to our foreign policy discourse. It asks the same old questions and provides no new answers. If this film came out three or four years ago, it would be relevant. But in 2007, it isn't. It's already dated. Considering the talent involved in the film, one would have expected more.

Andy: I wouldn't be so quick to call the film dated, as the number of movies that have come out on these issues using contemporary language and events is actually pretty small, especially from Hollywood. The root of what makes the movie compelling to me is the performance of Tom Cruise. For years Cruise has been playing slick, smooth talking, vaguely likable characters, so it's in some ways surprising that it took him this long to play a politician. His speeches to Meryl Streep about the war on terror are framed by the filmmaker in a way to make us be distrustful of them. But Cruise lays them out logically, passionately, and in a way that a reasonable person would have trouble finding serious fault with. In its failure to seriously answer the question of why we should distrust what he is saying, Lions for Lambs becomes less declarative than it wanted to be, but more complex.

Ryan: Like I said before, there are moments of intrigue in the movie. The film is interconnected with three separate stories and some work better than others. The scenes with Cruise and Streep are the most engrossing and both actors do a superb job with their respected performances. The scene with Redford, as a professor talking to a lackadaisical student, is interesting and provides the real weight of the movie that of getting involved to make a difference. The storyline with the two soldiers is not on the same level of the other two narratives mainly because it is not developed as well as the other two stories.

Overall,though, this is a movie that should have been better than it is. Final grade: C+.

Andy: I'll agree that the story of the two soldiers was in some ways wasted. They are interesting characters portrayed by relatively unknown actors who did a pretty good job (Michael Pena and Derek Luke), but they simply weren't developed enough to hold the weight the film needed them to. It was probably worth having this plot be a little light to avoid the movie pushing much more over two hours, though.

Generally Lions for Lambs only misfires a bit, and is an interesting and entertaining movie. Final grade: B+.