Review by jimstaudt-142-658515

When this movie came out, it was panned by the right as being "too anti-Bush" and anti-war. Well, what could we expect from Hollywood other than that? Now, 7 years later, the story line seems eerily prophetic. Senator Irving (Cruise), responding to the journalist's (Streep) question "Why not just pull out?", says (paraphrasing here), "One, Iraq goes back to being a third world country in ruins, two, Iran will have nuclear capability, and three, Afghanistan will continue to be the crap-hole it is, with a strengthened Taliban as a result." Funny, this is exactly what Barack Obama has accomplished. His pulling out of Iraq has destroyed what was a budding democracy, his weakness in dealing with Iran has them on the verge of having a bomb, and his pending promised pull-out from Afghanistan will have made 10 years of war there all for nothing, at the cost of an indeterminable amount of "blood and treasure". And hundreds of young men and women walking around on aluminum "legs", trying to make do with plastic arms, or dead.... or worse. And yes, Virginia, the Taliban (and al-qaeda) are indeed strengthened, despite the Obama claim that they were "decimated".

All told, a good movie. Great performances by Cruise (very believable as the either idealistic or phony (depending on your political point of view) "rising star" senator, Redford as your typical overpaid anti-war ideologue, and Streep as the reporter who thinks it's more important to report the news as she sees it as opposed to simply reporting the news. A great "message" movie, whether you take it from the point of view of the right or the left.