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Lions for Lambs Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: R (for some war violence and language) Genre: Drama Theater release: November 09, 2007 by United Artists Directed by: Robert Redford Runtime: 1 hour 31 minutes Cast: Robert Redford (Professor Stephen Malley), Meryl Streep (Janine Roth), Tom Cruise (Senator Jasper Irving), Derek Luke (Arian Finch), Michael Peña (Ernest Rodriguez), Andrew Garfield (Todd Hayes), Peter Berg (Lt. Col. Falco) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Imagine that you are Tom Cruise, and that your career and reputation have begun to falter a wee bit, and so you decide to launch a new phase in your career by, say, taking charge of an entire studio. Imagine that the first film released under your leadership—a film that, not incidentally, features you as one of its stars—is about to come out. Now imagine that the only publicity you intend to do for this movie is a single, private, hour-long, one-on-one interview with a reporter who works for a TV network but brings no recording devices whatsoever with her, let alone anything resembling a camera crew. No photos, no televised interviews, no beaming face on television screens everywhere; instead, nothing but your words, as scribbled down in shorthand by a reporter who, incidentally, doesn't like your movies very much.

Tom Cruise as Senator Jasper Irving

Does that sound implausible? Of course it does. And it is just as implausible as one of the main narrative threads of Lions for Lambs, the first film Cruise has starred in since he was unceremoniously booted from the Paramount lot and struck a deal to take the reins at United Artists. Cruise plays Senator Jasper Irving, a hotshot politician with a background in military intelligence who invites a journalist, Janine Roth (Meryl Streep), to his office for an exclusive interview, where he reveals that he is one of the masterminds behind a brand new military strategy that is unfolding in Afghanistan as they speak. Jasper tells Janine he is giving her a big scoop, and he clearly thinks the new strategy and his involvement with it will boost his own political ambitions—but he isn't exactly maximizing his exposure, or the strategy's.

Why is a mere senator and not, say, the Defense Secretary discussing key military tactics with the press? Good question. There is a brief line to the effect that Jasper is chummier with the president than actual members of the administration, but still, come on. It seems pretty clear that the meeting between Jasper and Janine has been contrived by the filmmakers simply to provide an opportunity for a lot of back-and-forth arguments about the so-called war on terror. And such a set-up would be forgivable, if the arguments were remotely interesting or enlightening.

Meryl Streep as journalist Janine Roth

But alas, they are not. Directed by Robert Redford from a script by Matthew Michael Carnahan (who also wrote The Kingdom), Lions for Lambs tells three stories that take place simultaneously over the course of an hour, two of which consist of people sitting and talking, and talking, and talking—and none of them say anything that hasn't already been said a thousand times, and often better, in the past several years. The meeting between the senator and the journalist is one such story. The other talky subplot stars Redford himself as Stephen Malley, a political-science professor who tries to persuade one of his students, Todd Hayes (Andrew Garfield), to become more engaged in his class—and in the political life of the nation.

The third story concerns two former students of Stephen's, Arian Finch (Derek Luke) and Ernest Rodriguez (Michael Peña), who decided to become more engaged in the life of their nation by joining the army—which wasn't exactly what their prof had in mind. Not only did they enlist in the military, they signed up for special forces, and so they just happen to be involved in the big new strategy that the senator is trying to promote to the journalist in his cushy air-conditioned office. Something goes wrong, though, and their helicopter is attacked. Ernest falls out, and Arian jumps after him, and they spend the rest of the film coping with wounds, shooting at enemies in the shadows, and waiting for their comrades to rescue them.

Robert Redford as Professor Stephen Malley

Unlike other recent politically-charged films such as Redacted and In the Valley of Elah, in which the American soldiers who serve in Iraq are revealed to be murderous rapists and/or sociopaths, Lions for Lambs belongs firmly to the camp which "supports the troops" while doubting the government that gives them their orders. The title itself stems from a comment made by a German officer during World War I, who said of the British army, "Never have I seen such lions led by such lambs." In this film, Arian and Ernest are the lions, and Jasper is the lamb who has squandered their courage by being overly confident in his new military strategy and in the intelligence on which it was based—though there is also something lamb-like about Janine, who is confronted with the possibility that she and her colleagues in the media were too easy on the government during the run-up to the Iraq War.

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