moviereview - Lions For Lambs

LIONS FOR LAMBS

	A senator has a plan for the war on terror. A lecturer has plans for his student. Two enlisted men have plans for their future.	score 4	moviereview rates films from 1 (unwatchable) to 5 (unmissable)
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Cast
Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Andrew Garfield, Michael Pena, Derek Luke

Director
Robert Redford

Screenwriter
Matthew Michael Carnahan

Country
USA

Rating / Running Time
M / 92 minutes

Australian Release
November 2007

Official Site

In Robert Redford’s polemic, three sets of people wring their hands about the future. A brash Republican senator (Cruise) has a plan to reverse the fortunes of war. He’s selling it to a journalist (Streep) who once admired his capacity to invigorate politics. Across town, a lecturer (Redford) is trying to convince a cynical student (Andrew Garfield) not to dismiss his own talent. He cites two young men (Michael Pena and Robert Luke) who chose to enlist as a way to change the future. At the time of these conversations, the lads are lost in Afghanistan, waist deep in trouble and far from help. They’re doing the hard work while others sit and bitch. And if this sounds like a typical Sunday morning across the Western world – it should.

Lions For Lambs takes its title from a German poet who likened courageous English soldiers in WW1 as lions slaughtered by their ineffectual, lamb-like leaders. Redford draws a similar comparison to foot soldiers, and the duped American public, with the Middle-Eastern mire in which they, including the willing coalition, find themselves today. Yet the story is not simply a tirade against deaf leadership, although there is plenty of ranting from either side of the party line. His point is about action, that Rome is burning and it’s time everyone stood for his or her beliefs. “Envelope stuffing is action,” says the professor. There’s even implicit admiration for the right-wing senator whose mantra – Whatever It Takes – reinforces the notion that history is forever being forgotten. Like it or not, at least he stepped up to the line.

For a film in which most of the characters simply engage in a political yak-fest, Lions For Lambs is a tense, sometimes thrilling reflection on combat. Redford, Streep and Cruise deliver bold performances that are more compelling for their seasoned professionalism. Newcomers are no less engaging. It’s an impassioned film that stands as a poignant defiance to the wet-dream ravings of The Kingdom, and a body shake to apathetic hand-wringers everywhere. Arriving three weeks out from local elections, it couldn’t be timelier.

// COLIN FRASER