Von Löwen und Lämmern

Thumbs are of no use in talking about Robert Redford's "Lions for Lambs." Sticking them up or down makes little sense. It's not that kind of movie. What kind is it? Pretty much without a category.

The time is the present, Bush II is president, there is an unending war in the Middle East, the setting is present-day D.C., everything looks documentary-realistic. It could be a Sunday-morning panel discussion, but the cast consists of a bevy of stars, performing magnificently, with a script that seems to be formed by headlines from today's newspapers.

At the center of the film is a lengthy, unlikely, but brilliant duet of a an interview between a veteran, nobody's-fool political reporter (Meryl Streep) and a young hotshot NeoCon senator (Tom Cruise), both utterly believable, notwithstanding the challenge of some lame lines by screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan for Cruise. Still, overall, the business between the two is the "people's business," about the lethal foreign-policy bungling of a war of choice, now running longer than World War II. (These are not editorial comments, but rather a report on what the film says.)

While dissecting the Iraqi disaster, and hearing some surprising and obviously manipulating admissions of errors from Cruise's hawkish senator, the issue at hand is the senator - a key military adviser to the President - trying to steer Streep's skeptical journalist into "selling" a new plan of attack in Afghanistan, something she instantly recognizes as a throwback to failed strategy in Vietnam.

Alternating with the interview segments are battle scenes in Afghanistan where two Army rangers (Derek Luke and Michael Peña) are risking their lives in implementing that new plan. Then, by a stretch and rather awkwardly, there sits Redford's professor in his West Coast college office, pulling the story together between the two lion-like Rangers, who were his students, and a bright, troubled student (Andrew Garfield) who lost his way, baa, baa, baa.

Significant and entertaining, thought-provoking and reality-based sad, mostly well-written, and exceptionally well-acted, "Lions for Lambs" is likely to leave the audience with the feeling of having participated in an important happening, but perhaps not quite knowing what it was.

Gushing about Streep is almost embarrassing, but... Once again, she transcends text, expectations, whatever you may anticipate, and gives a performance to remember and treasure. Her expressions, body language, silences create a character with a life of her own, a "real person" we, the audience, feel as if we have known always, intimately.

It's easy to imagine the 2007 drama Lions for Lambs performed on the stage, since the story is so dialogue-driven and only three simple sets-or merely four chairs, if a modern take was adopted-would be necessary. Three stories are all related, each including a dialogue between two characters, in a time-sensitive story during the current (depending on when you rent this movie) war in the Middle East. In one, a powerful Republican senator, Tom Cruise, tries to persuade a liberal journalist, Meryl Streep, to write a favorable piece on his efforts for the war. In another, a California university professor, Robert Redford, tries to get an apathetic student, Andrew Garfield, to care about current events. In the third, two soldiers and friends, Michael Pena and Derek Luke, find themselves isolated and fighting for their lives during a mission gone wrong.

If you're hooked already, like I was, you're going to want to rent this one. Plus, it's Robert Redford's baby (meaning, he directed it) so you know it's going to be well-made and full of top-notch acting. If this ever does get turned into a stage play, I think it'll be a great success. Many theatergoers will enjoy the witty dialogue and agree with the message. A word of warning, though: if you find yourself agreeing with Tom Cruise as the movie starts, you might not enjoy the rest of it. I wouldn't exactly classify this film as a "message movie," but it definitely has a theme. If you're a Republican, there's a chance you might not like it.

Good directors always have a point of view, and Robert Redford is no exception. Once a gorgeous leading man, he has emerged in the past years as a fine director. What he's always been is a political and environmental activist. So "Lions for Lambs," coming from him, should be no surprise.

The film, which runs only 88 minutes, shows us three scenarios: a Senator (Tom Cruise) handing an intelligent reporter (Meryl Streep) a "new plan" for the war in Iraq, which is nothing more than a strategy from the Vietnam War that didn't work; a professor (Redford) prodding a lazy student (Andrew Garfield) about his beliefs and urging him to be an active, not passive participant in the world; and two Army rangers (Derek Luke and Michael Peña) behind enemy lines in freezing Afghanistan. The reporter doesn't want to write the story given to her by the Senator because she feels it's false, but she needs her job; the hawk Senator is, after all, only doing his job, as is the professor; and the two soldiers are doing theirs.

This could have been a stunning film - as it is, it does hold interest despite being very talky. The stark picture of the soldiers juxtaposed with the Senator in his well-tailored suit ("says he in the air-conditioned room," Streep reminds him as he's talking about the war) is a sad reminder that for all the plans, the statistics and the estimates, soldiers are human beings, and young human beings at that, committed to what they're doing - and the professor's student could easily have been one of them, freezing in Afgahanistan instead of contemplating his life. In fact, the two soldiers were the professor's students.

Despite what others have said, there aren't any true good guys or bad guys in "Lions for Lambs." Talk is cheap (and there's plenty of it in this movie) - it's easy, detached from a set of circumstances, to intellectualize it or to work it like a chess set. It's easy to say you don't believe something and won't write it - when your job is threatened, you fold. What the film has is two heroes. Despite what everybody talks about in the movie, two people literally put their lives on the line. For what? Well, that's for you to decide.

So many negative comments about this movie. But I think we should take a moment to assess what the movie is about. Starting from the title to the credits, the movie is not about a heroic battle or an indelible mistake by a over zealous, self absorbed government. It is about understanding a mindset. If any of you have ever read Francis Fukuyama... its about history repeating itself. Its about the common man being a pawn, about how life really is not a 'great equalizer'. Redford does a brilliant job looking at showing the dynamic impact numerous aspects/events and individuals who impact our lives truly have. The self serving ego of one senator, or the inability of a teacher to persuade a student, or a reporter having to turn a blind eye to conscience because of a need to put a meal on the table the next day. It is nice to finally watch a Hollywood war related film without a heroic massacre. Or a rescue from the jaws of death, or the pity of a sympathetic enemy. Indegenes (French film about WWII) was the last movie that actually attempted to understand the core of the individual, the motivation of an action. Redford captures the same...a stellar film maker!

"Lions for Lambs" follows three interconnected storylines that all revolve around politics. More narrowly they revolve around the politics of war, and more specifically still: the war in Afghanistan. At the time of the release of this movie the U. S. had been in Afghanistan for about five years and only now, roughly twenty years after storming Afghanistan to punish the Taliban for their role in 9/11, has the U. S. decided to bring their last troops home.

The three storylines "Lambs" followed were 1.) Professor Stephen Malley (Robert Redford) and one of his students (Andrew Garfield) at a university somewhere in California. 2.) Ernest Rodriguez (Michael Pena) and Arian Finch (Derek Luke) who were also students of Prof. Malley's before deciding to enlist in the army. 3.) Republican Senator Jasper Irving (Tom Cruise) and reporter Janine Roth (Meryl Streep) who were ardently discussing the U. S.'s new strategy for ending the war for good which just so happen to involve Rodriguez and Finch.

There you have it. You have American politics, with fighting being a part of it, being discussed in broader more philosophical terms in the professor's office. You have an actual politician discussing how to bring an end to the war in Afghanistan. And you have actual soldiers fighting the war in Afghanistan. It all made for some interesting and even somewhat passionate arguments, but that's where it stopped. "Lambs" seems to have been made to make its viewers think and come to their own conclusion about who or what was right and wrong. I can appreciate that even if I wasn't the biggest fan of the topic.