LIONS FOR LAMBS

FOX

RELEASED 9 November 2007

I rolled my eyes when I saw the trailer for ‘Lions for Lambs’. Hollywood golden boy and Sundance indie ‘rebel’ Robert Redford has made a preachy movie about the war on terror, and he’s pulled in a couple of big names to sell the movie. Cynical I know, but trailers often do that. They have to sell the movie within two minutes, and I didn’t fancy buying this one. I hadn’t enjoyed a Redford movie since ‘Quiz Show’ (1994) and ‘Lions for Lambs’ also happens to be the big Tom Cruise comeback movie after that very public vote of no-confidence from the Paramount film studio, his spiritual home for virtually his entire career. 

The film is played out over roughly one single hour in three different parts of the world. On the West Coast of America a concerned University Professor Malley (Robert Redford) attempts to convince his most promising student (Andrew Garfield) that he can make a difference in the world as they drink Starbucks coffee. On the East Coast in Senator Jasper Irving’s (Tom Cruise) Washington office, TV journalist Janine Roth (Meryl Streep) is being given an exclusive hour of his personal time to explain America’s new foreign policy and how they are going to win the war on terror. And the third story strand is set over the Afghanistan mountains at night as the first new military strategy by the US government is being implemented. As Janine Roth asks Senator Irving when this new strategy will begin, he replies ‘five minutes ago’, with cocky self-belief.

So after all my early fears from watching the trailer, and sitting down in the theatre with some trepidation, I’m glad to say I enjoyed the film immensely. Thanks to the powerful script and perfect casting, ‘Lions for Lambs’ is a well-timed wake-up call to today’s youth and the potential they have to make a change in this increasingly turbulent world. And the ninety minute running time absolutely flew by. At last, a big movie that isn’t two and half hours long. The structure of the movie, written by ‘The Kingdom’s Matthew Michael Carnahan, is a clever mix of ideology, the politics of spin, and the brutal reality of fighting an enemy you can’t see. Redford’s idealistic character is a throwback to the hope of Sixties America, before Vietnam and Watergate, while Cruise’s Senator is the America that stumbles blindly from one fight to the next without stepping back to look at the bigger picture. If the thought of four people sitting talking politics and philosophy for the entire movie sounds hard-going (which it isn’t), then there is the action element involving the covert aerial mission in Afghanistan to break up the desk-bound drama.

Performances from Cruise and Streep are up there with the best of 2007. Cruise has played close to this type of character before (‘A Few Good Men’, ‘Magnolia’) but there’s a definite maturity to his acting here, and Streep once again adds to her recent run of knockout performances this decade.

I think ‘Lions for Lambs’ is one of the best films of 2007, and the best movie Robert Redford has been involved with for a decade.

FIVE OUT OF FIVE