Critics Rant is presenting two different views of LIONS FOR LAMBS, one reviewer liked it, the other didn't. What did you think about it?

By David Valdes

Robert Redford’s LIONS FOR LAMBS is a no-frills film with a liberal message and a lot of ambition.  It is also a star-filled affair, with Redford, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise driving much of the dialogue laden plot.  The film’s great error was in failing to show the audience much of anything while instead counting on A-list actors’ long-winded speeches to do the convincing.  It doesn’t work.

LIONS FOR LAMBS is a motion picture admonishment of both the current administration and the apathetic American public.  The film is not an epic war drama nor is it a political thriller.  It’s simply a collage of conversations had by different people about the same thing.  As a result, what Redford probably thought was a straightforward and poignant call to action is actually a talky and preachy mess.

Let’s start with the most painful conversation of them all.  Redford’s character is an idealistic professor at “A California University” (I’m not even joking; that’s what the subtitle said) who invites a good looking but seemingly average student into his office to discuss the young man‘s potential.  Redford is upset with the student’s attendance record and general apathy toward learning because the young man previously showed so much promise.  In flashbacks, we see the student engaged in a class discussion that does nothing to substantiate the Redford character’s but I digress.  They spend the entire movie rapping back and forth about whether it’s worth even caring in the current political climate.  The professor thinks it is.  The disaffected student thinks it isn’t.  In a movie full of blunt and heavy-handed lessons, this is the most clichéd, didactic and grueling one of all.  The conversation between these two is so generic and obtuse, it is unbelievable.


Intercut with the conversation at A California University are scenes involving Senator Jasper Irving (Cruise) and journalist Janine Roth (Streep).  The interplay between these two very different Hollywood icons is exciting at first.  Cruise plays a suave and wily senator trying to sell a pro-Bush spin on the war; Streep plays an inquisitive liberal journalist who could stand to be a little more assertive.  Irving tells Roth about an impending military insurgence in Afghanistan, a move that he wants Roth to publicize in a very specific (read: positive) light.  He frames the military maneuver as the first step in setting the American military on the right course.  Streep’s character understands she is being sold a story and becomes conflicted: does she run the admittedly big story fed to her by the manipulative senator or not?  This is a liberal film by a liberal director with a liberal message; which option do you thinks he decides?

The third story LIONS FOR LAMBS tells is that of two minority college students who signed up for the armed forces in a bold attempt to “stand for something.”  They believe it is the right thing to do and that two black and Latino college graduates with army experience are bound to be successful in life.  They are seen as rash and naïve for signing up for a “senseless war,” yet as heroes in battle.  Much of their storyline involves the two soldiers, broken and bloodied in the snow, waiting to be swarmed by fast-approaching Taliban.  A prime example of this film’s unsubtle approach is the imagery that abounds during the final seconds of this particular storyline.  Redford does not give you the luxury of choosing how to feel about these characters; he tells you how to feel.

The best thing about this film, then, is Streep’s careful performance.  She doesn’t have much to do and could have probably gotten away with a phoned-in performance.  Yet, she is deliberate in all of her mannerisms and the words she says ring with meaning, no matter how bad some of the lines are.  It is enthralling to watch her sit in a chair and listen to the Cruise character’s monologue.  She squirms when he gets intense, nods her head intently as he delivers a quotable line and she raises her eyebrows at his more outlandish statements.


There is moment toward the end of the film in Streep’s character lets loose and practically screams everything we know she has been thinking the entire movie.  It is a release for the character as well as the audience, but unfortunately not enough to give this 90-minute political science lecture much of a conclusion.