Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
11/10/07
We're screwed. I turn
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over and over in my head: even in
the absence of a preferable victory, how could we even get out without
collapsing the International Jenga stack into total and irreparable chaos?
The only conclusion this thinking ever draws? We're screwed.
Which brings me to Lions for Lambs, Robert Redford's wonky new drama,
which trots out every possible argument for and against the wars; it has
no answers, only challenges to get our asses out there and come up with
some. In essence, it's a movie telling us to go unscrew ourselves:
very well-acted and intellectually engaging, but also targeted primarily
at those least likely to be open to anything but being told they're right.
Three (maybe three and a
half) stories play out simultaneously: Professor Stephen Malley (Redford)
asks bright but slacking student Todd Hayes (Andrew Garfield) to meet with
him about his spotty attendance at Malley's political science class.
Todd's lost his faith in politics and the power of the little guy to make
a difference, so the Professor tells him the story of two students who
had that faith. They're Ernest Rodriguez (Michael Pena) and Arian
Finch (Derek Luke), who we now see as soldiers in Afghanistan. Under
the command of Lt. Col Falco (Peter Berg), they're at the forefront of
a new military strategy designed to put small groups of soldiers as far
out on the front line as possible to directly engage the Taliban forces
in the Northern Mountains and claim the high ground. This strategy
is the brainchild of ambitious Republican Senator Jasper Irving (Tom Cruise),
who's summoned once-idealistic reporter Janine Roth (Meryl Streep) to his
office for an hour-long meeting where he's to lay out the new offensive
to her in hopes of getting positive spin on the 24-hour news network where
she's now employed. All these characters spar and debate and hash
out their respective positions, trying to figure out who's to blame for
the wars and their failings and who can get us out of this mess.
The movie has only one answer, and it applies to both questions:
us.
I've read a lot of people
over the years puzzle out how Robert Redford can be the Father of the American
Independent Film Movement through his Sundance Institute while continuing
to make movies that have nothing in common with its' results. Part
of the answer lies in Professor Malley's lecture/sermon/challenge to Todd:
it doesn't matter whether his students do something he agrees with, but
he wants them to do something. But Lions for Lambs
also shows Redford trying something new artistically, trying to make his
very own hyperlink movie, a la Babel or Rendition.
But rather than random or ironic connections, the players in his game make
up a simple wheel of fate that spins before our eyes for an hour and a
half.
Part of the problem with
the movie, of course, is that it does little but spin: it's OK to
ask challenging questions, but like the Professor, it adopts an awfully
superior attitude for a story that doesn't know any better than we do how
to get out of this mess. There are two things that make it worth
watching, and the first is right above the title: big ticket acting.
You'd better have good performances if you're going to just sit around
and talk, and Streep, Cruise, Redford and Garfield rise nicely to the occasion.
The scenes between Janine and Senator Irving are pretty much pitch perfect,
as he gradually wears down her illusions of journalistic superiority to
reveal them as partners in the continuing sale of military action to a
public that's clueless as to the specifics of what's really happening.
The two spar, chat, challenge and assess and it never for a moment feels
inauthentic. An entire movie of these two characters, as well as
Janine's post-interview soul searching with her boss (Kevin Dunn), would
have been better than Lions for Lambs as a whole. Cruise probably
seems too sharp and smart to REALLY be a Senator (particularly one who's
been there for 8 years: some of them seem quick in the beginning,
but the monotony of relentlessly begging for donations and lying to their
constituents tends to give them all a certain oblivious glaze after a term
or two), but he does a great job of commanding the screen and making his
policy-talk sound totally authentic. Streep, who was just on the
other side of this mess as a government heavy in Rendition,
strikes a perfect note of timid objection, always ready to ask a question
but never to stand her ground. One complaint: I wish the script
made it clearer exactly what she does for fictional cable news network
ANX: she definitely used to be a print reporter for TIME, and continues
to act as though that's her job. We never see her on-camera, and
what we do see of ANX isn't terribly convincing.
The sequences with the Professor
and Todd are also well played and sincere, but by necessity are less interesting
because they tend to get lost in a collegiate fantasy land of high-minded
ideals that often end up chasing their own tails. If you believe
(as I do) that both political parties are irredeemably corrupt, throwing
your support behind one or the other isn't going to do anything but aid
corruption. Sure, at least then you can say you tried, but tried
to do what, exactly? Redford is in a fairly unique position
of having a solid enough record of activism and creative integrity to pull
off a role that primarily involves looking down his nose at the audience,
which is no mean feat, while Garfield is able to stand his ground and defend
slackerism without seeming like a total loser. On the other hand,
the flashback scenes involving Ernest and Arian in Malley's class are the
movie's least convincing, and if there's really a college class like it
anywhere in the world, I'm glad to be here in front of this laptop rather
than there. Finally, the Afghanistan scenes are sincere, well-played,
and ultimately serve the story's purpose, but they're also pretty much
all the same. I'm usually a really big Michael Pena fan, but here
he's given little to do but epitomize the movie's shaky definition of civic
responsibility.
The other thing I really
liked was the film's willingness to hold everyone (well, everyone but smug
college professors) equally responsible for allowing the War on Terror
to become so messed up. Not liking a government policy isn't the
same as opposing it, just as attacking decisions after they've been made
isn't the same as trying to have a voice in the decision-making process,
and every one of the movie's characters not played by the director has
committed a sin of either commission or omission that keeps the War Machine
rolling in the wrong direction. This, ironically, will probably turn
off more viewers than any of the film's real flaws: how many people
in our poisonous cable news culture care enough about politics to see a
movie like this without a fanatical belief that their Democratic or Republican
team is 100% right in all things? Lions for Lambs viewers
should prepare for a whole lotta J'Accuse and not many solutions, but it
may well be that we can't move on to the solution stage until we let go
of our collective fantasy of personal blamelessness.
Lions for Lambs is
desperate to shake the viewer by the collar and throw them out of the theater
into the nearest polling place, campaign headquarters or other venue for
what is now euphemistically known as “being active in your community”.
Because most of us have TV schedules and PS2s that keep us from such high-mindedness,
it's likely to be greeted primarily with the shrugs of a contemptuous audience.
But it's a good, thoughtful movie, filled with quality acting. Give
it try: who knows, you might even have an epiphany about how
to win the War on Terror. Otherwise, we're screwed. |
