“Listen... I'm tired of your chickenshit games! I don't want hints... I need to know what you know.”
-- Bob Woodward from All The President’s Men
“You fuckin' people. You have no idea how to defend a nation. All you did was weaken a country today, Kaffee. That's all you did. You put people's lives in danger. Sweet dreams, son.”
-- Colonel Nathan R. Jessup from A Few Good Men
“Any man with a collection like this is a man who's never set foot on a battlefield.”
-- Lt. Gen. Eugene Irwin from The Last Castle
Robert Redford’s Lions For Lambs works well as an attack on the fourth estate during the War On Terror era. Lions For Lambs arrives in a season of box office disappointment for serious films dealing with heavy political and military themes. One only has to look at last month’s Rendition to realize that these films are a tough sell. The good news is that Redford’s film works a lot better than Gavin Hood’s Rendition. Rendition had the potential to be a very engaging film about the torture debate but got lost in its desire to be like last year’s Babel. At its best, Lions For Lambs is a thought provoking film that dares the audience to think about the current state of affairs of American foreign policy and how its impacts all of us. At its worst, the film is a lot of talk. Talking heads are great for Sunday morning public affairs programs, but that does not translate into great cinema. Talking heads make for excellent documentaries like No End In Sight or any number of PBS Frontline documentaries. The film’s screenwriter, Michael Matthew Carnahan also wrote The Kingdom-- a very entertaining action film that used the police procedural as a way to combat terrorism abroad. The film seemed to be saying that you should send a special team of FBI agents to fight the terrorists. The Kingdom is the only film that has fared well at the box office this season dealing with these issues. Still, it was not the hit they thought it would be.
Robert Redford and Michael Matthew Carnahan, use three loosely connected storylines to deliver a stinging attack on the media. The film has a noble goal of attacking the apathy of the nation. It helps if the rebuke comes from Robert Redford. There must be a boiling rage within him. He once played Bob Woodward in the iconic All The President’s Men. Bob Woodward used to go after people in power who were lying. What happened to him? When he did he lay down his weapons and become the Bush White House Stenographer. Finally, he changed his tune with State Of Denial back in 2006. While Woodward is never mentioned in the film, Redford uses television journalist, Janine Roth, played by Meryl Streep, as a way to deliver an assault of what went wrong with media in the build up to the Iraq War. The film works best as it explores the tense relationship between journalists and politicians. The scenes between Streep’s Roth and Tom Cruise’s rising star GOP Senator, Jasper Irving are the highlight of the film. Tom Cruise (as Irving) is perfect. Irving is a bastion of neo-conservatism and patriotism-- never once doubting the mission statement and goals of the war on terror. Cruise is convincing as Irving. Leo Strauss must have written his lines. Cruise takes all the energy from his great previous roles in Magnolia, A Few Good Men, Collateral and War Of The Worlds and creates a vivid presence onscreen. Irving gives Roth an hour to sell her a new strategy in the Afghanistan conflict. Irving has a bombshell of a story. It seems that a new front has opened in that war-- Iran is allowing militants to cross through the country from Iraq into Afghanistan. Shia and Sunnis are working together. Irving believes this is the worst case scenario. Should Roth believe him? This is where the film works. Will the press once again sell the administration’s new war plan as it did in 2003 prior to the Iraq War? Will history repeat itself?
I like what Robert Redford is doing in this part of the film. He is taking the media to task for not asking the hard questions about the Iraq War. Janine Roth is the antithesis of Irving. She still believes in her Sixties idealism. Her liberalism has never faded, but we learn through their conversation that Roth, like everyone else, went along for the ride and helped the White House sell the War to the American People. It is here that Redford’s own anger comes out. America was fooled once going to war in Vietnam. Yet the same thing happened again with the Iraq War. The question that Roth must now ask herself is can she sell this new strategy to her bosses over at the network. Will she make the same mistake again? Of all the conversations, this is the most powerful one in the film.
Robert Redford plays an idealistic college professor, Stephen Malley, at a West Coast university. Malley meets with one of his students, Todd Hayes (Andrew Garfield) to discuss many things. He wants to reach out to Todd, a privileged, but disaffected student.
We learn that Todd is very bright and very much on top of things in Malley’s class. In short, he wants Todd to do something important with his life. He sees a lot of potential in the fraternity boy. What we learn through the course of their conversation is enough to make us want to scream. It seems that Malley’s idealism influenced two of his previous students, Arian (Derek Luke) and Ernest (Michael Pena) in the wrong way.
They took the important thing to mean they should volunteer and join the military. They go to fight in Afghanistan. Malley is full of guilt and blame. This is not what he wanted from his students. I am sure this part of the film dealing with Todd will have an impact on the college students watching it. What side are you on in the post- 9/11 world? You have to stand for something and put those beliefs to action. Will his message get through to Todd?
The conversation between Todd and Malley relates directly to Arian and Ernest’s mission in Afghanistan. They embark on the beginning of the plan that Irving tells Roth about at their meeting. All three stories are connected. The connection is done more straightforward than in other films like Rendition or Babel. All three of these segments are going on within the same hour. Their Chinook helicopter is attacked by enemy fire. Arian and Ernest jump off the helicopter before it crashes. They are the only survivors. This is the weakest part of the film. That is sad because it should be one of the strongest given the incredible story of how Arian and Ernest got to this point. I guess you could say it works to an extent by showing how policy becomes action. Derek Luke and Michael Pena are very good actors. I wish they had more to do in the film for this part of the film just does not work.
Lions For Lambs is a maddening film. It could have easily been called Conversations on The War On Terror. The film asks a lot of questions. What does it mean to be patriotic? What does the truth mean? What side are you on? There is a lot of talk in the film. I cannot say that this makes for compelling cinema. Yes it is great that Robert Redford has made a message film. It is his most interesting and engaging film since Quiz Show as a director. Yet something does not add up in the end. The film does feel like a lecture and civics lesson at times. John Sayles makes these kind of films a lot better. This film is great for people who do not read a daily newspaper and do not keep up with current events. To everyone else, it is not telling them anything they did not already know. I do feel like I am watching Meet The Press or Hardball when watching parts of this film. I live in the Washington DC Metro area and have for most of my life. We live with these issues 24/7. While I admire what the film is trying to do, it cannot help but feel dated. The real life narrative is constantly changing on a daily basis. The events in Pakistan of the last week underscore this problem. No film has yet to capture the times we live in right now. I do give Lions For Lambs credit for trying.
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