The film doesn’t come up with answers, but it has outstanding performances by Robert Redford and Meryl Streep.
By Bob Brown
The war in Iraq, and the resurgent conflict in Afghanistan, have gone well past their freshness dates. World War II was, to date, more than a year and a half shorter, but there were plenty of postwar films to explain it all to ourselves, to pat ourselves on the back for saving civilization. Today, producers don’t wait that long for the present war to resolve itself, to be redeemed in the public consciousness — if it ever will be. As if we weren’t tired enough already, here’s yet another film that parses our angst over what seems an endless conflict.
Matthew Michael Carnahan follows his first screenplay on our Middle East entanglements (The Kingdom) with a second, produced in the same year. This movie wears its politics on its sleeve. There isn’t anything coming out of characters’ mouths that you haven’t heard before on the news, from both sides of the question. There are endless questions about the right thing to do.
It’s supposed to be an action film. Indeed, some bullets whiz and bombs explode. But the main action is the sound, not of guns, but of gums flapping. As directed by Robert Redford, the patron saint of preachy films, Lions for Lambs is a vehicle for placing various positions before us, presumably so they may be examined in a serious way. The characters then are like vessels for the various windy pronouncements.
First, there’s Republican Senator Jasper Irving (sort of rhymes with “exasperating”). As played convincingly by Tom Cruise (who’s really playing himself as if being interviewed by Matt Lauer), Irving has a secret plan to turn the tide. He wants to place U.S. Special Forces at advance posts in Afghanistan. It’s a sort of diversionary tactic to create what he thinks will be a winnable battle and buy him some credibility for his run at the White House.
Crack reporter Janine Roth (Meryl Streep), whom Irving is feeding a scoop on his plan, sees right through it. A child of the Vietnam era, she doesn’t want to play this game. She’s holding out against the pressures of her editor (Kevin Dunn), who has sold out long ago and wants to get the exclusive.
Meanwhile, on a California college campus, political science professor Stephen Malley (Robert Redford) is trying to convince one of his brighter, more cynical students, Todd Hayes (Andrew Garfield), to return to class and get re-engaged. Todd has been chilling out at the fraternity house and coming in just to pass the required tests. He’s coasting through a major he doesn’t even believe in anymore.
The last students the professor had faith in enlisted, much against the advice of Malley, a Vietnam vet who saw his platoon decimated and his friends’ lives ruined. Malley quotes a German general, who said of the courageous English troops he faced in the Great War, “Nowhere else have I seen such lions led by such lambs.” To Malley, his students’ decision to enlist was wrong — but a courageous one based on beliefs, and on confidence that actions can make a difference.
The movie flits back and forth in time and place. Malley’s model students, Ernest (Michael Pena) and Arian (Derek Luke), were hard-luck kids who worked their tails off and had great promise. Now we see them being air-dropped into advance positions on an Afghan mountain top, where they are immediately pinned down by enemy fire. Their bond is tested to the limits.
Will they establish their position? Will Janine resist the pressure to spread Senator Irving’s bogus plan as the real deal? Can professor Malley persuade his best student to get off his rear and make a difference? “At least you will have done something,” Malley says. And most importantly, will Todd give up his fixation on fraternity life and girls — if only for a semester?
As a director, Redford has always been interested in questions of engagement. Strong characters are contributors rather than passive observers. This film is more or less a microcosm of the American psyche. The problem is baldly stated through characters who are emblematic: Like Todd, comfortable, privileged, talented young American has been complacent and consumerist. The less privileged, like the Chicano Ernest and the African-American Arian, have struggled against the odds and know the meaning of action. Like Janine, the media are implicated in spreading the propaganda of the slick politicians, the Senator Irvings, even when they know better.
These aren’t terribly deep or sophisticated observations. Thankfully, it’s not a terribly long movie at less than an hour and a half. It can’t carry the message that long. The two outstanding performances are by Redford and Streep, who are characters on the high ground. But the film doesn’t come up with answers. It points a finger at those who think the responsibility for doing something is someone else’s. If not you, then who? If not now, when?
Rated R for some war violence and language.