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The screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan (who also wrote this year’s The Kingdom) takes a three-prong approach by giving us a little taste every few minutes from the classroom to the battleground and the media’s relationship with the decision makers in-between. Janine Roth (Meryl Streep) is a well-respected D.C. journalist meeting with Senator Jasper Irving (Tom Cruise), whom she once called “the future of his party.” That would be Republican. This one-on-one exclusive to get the word out on his latest battleplan is his way of repaying her kind words at election time. Jasper’s hard stance on “winning” this war on terror opens himself up to far more questions and his thinly disguised public relations move turns into a sparring match over the unknown finality of his plan that is going into motion as they speak.

Immediately it looks to be a big mistake with a small platoon’s helicopter taking fire, suffering casualties and seeing Ernest Rodriguez (Michael Pena) falling out. Not content to see his best friend left behind, Arian Finch (Derek Luke) willingly jumps out; neither of whom wearing a parachute and left in the snowy hills of Afghanistan wounded and slowly surrounded by enemy troops. Both soldiers were once enrolled at “a California University” (a label that suggests more liberal parody than parity) under the tutelage of Professor Stephen Malley (Robert Redford), a Vietnam vet who has arranged his own meeting with an absentee student (Andrew Garfield) whom he sees great potential for. He even offers him an easy out with a guaranteed “B” (and not a single class left to attend) or he can sit in on a private lecture with Teach about lost promise and a semi-Greek chorus on the other prongs intercut within.

There is nothing about Lions for Lambs that isn’t there for support of a position held by two-thirds of the national choir. But preaching isn’t it’s problem. It’s not even lecturing. Carnahan’s script toots a lot of Gondor horns about politicians sidestepping the issues if it gets them a few steps closer to the White House. Then it goes about doing the same thing avoiding any serious debate or necessary contradictions from liberal opponents. Toss in a little responsibility issue about the complicity of the media to sell the war from the beginning and the evils of making a buck over making a change and the guilt trip any outspoken individual receives for speaking up is hypocritical when the film is precisely all talk – but with the benefit of some Hollywood heavyweights behind it.

The confrontation between Streep and Cruise comes down to the malfeasance of powerful egos thinking they can achieve victory as easy as an election or being number one in their class. Translate: The war is unwinable and we may be able to outthink, but not outlast the bad guys this time. The enlistment of Luke & Pena is documented in flashback in a gutcheck moment about putting up or shutting up. Their radical plan for replacing Junior Year with service to society in theory sounds brilliant but has the aura of participating in the Peace Corps while wearing an orange jumpsuit that will hear “NO WAY” more than once from the nation’s youth. (Hell, I remember during my duty for Christian Confirmation the various tasks we were optioned and seeing certain fellow students get to opt out thanks to parents on the school board.) Their character’s background, mostly spoken by Redford, would have been a more effective driving force of their plot section then experiencing another behind-enemy-lines survival where Pena (a good actor) makes his play to become typecast as the guy with broken legs trapped in the worst circumstances. Translate: Our boys are dying over there and for what? Finally, there’s the “university” sequence, where we alternate from wishing we had Professor Redford back in school to wishing we’d shift away from this clearly uninteresting student whose contributions to his own class are so base that we wonder how well-traveled the Prof is if he considers it “one of the most interesting debates I’ve ever been a part of.” Translate: The old guard can school you on what’s wrong, but it’s up to the next generation to make it right.

The longer the situation in Iraq goes on, the less interesting a debate it becomes since there almost is no debate anymore. We’re all basically just buying time until the next election where we hope a change of pace or a fresh face might make it all go away. Didn’t quite work out with Fahrenheit 9/11, did it? And that’s about as weighted a scale as you’re going to find. Despite Michael Moore’s frequency for stacking an already stacked deck with trickery and image association, the man does know that two hours of saying the same thing is going to wear thin. Lions for Lambs seeks its knowledge from the political to the philosophical, but its editorial patches are so obviously concrete that it may as well stamp each section with one of those animated television logos to let you know what you’re watching and what’s coming up next.

Cruise and Streep get the most mileage from their scenes as characters who get a few momentary reflections to define them from more than just their entrenched beliefs. Luke and Pena shine brighter in the classroom than on the battlefield. Redford, as always, is a guy that instantly commands your respect on screen, but not when peppering his points with “ROME IS BURNING!” and expecting viewers to rush from the theater as if someone just yelled “fire.” At under 90 minutes, Lions for Lambs is Redford’s shortest directorial effort by a half-hour. Any additional length may have been welcome if it meant stretching its philosophies, but welcomely excised if it meant more neutrality on fresh perspectives if not on winged affiliations. The title refers to a quote from a German General during WWII (who may have aped it from Alexander the Great - a playful bit of irony about Carnahan's script) who commented on the bravery of his enemy soldiers being led into harms way by the stupidity of its leaders. Alone that’s enough for some Fox News douchebag to call out Redford as a Nazi sympathizer, but the film still isn’t quite enough to put people like that in their place. Lions for Lambs poses a lot of questions, but you won’t have to wait around until the end to find the answer, because you know right from the beginning exactly what you’re getting.

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originally posted: 11/09/07 16:00:00
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