Lions for Lambs

Tom Cruise at the Lions for Lambs Wordl Premiere, Chris Jackson

Robert Redford has gathered a star-studded cast for his seventh film. Tom Cruise plays Senator Jasper Irving, who is convinced that the USA are going to win the war on terror using his new strategy – randomly attacking Iran and sending micro-troops to the battlefield as cannon fodder. Meryl Streep is Janine Roth, an upright reporter who interviews Irving exposing the inconsistencies of his talk.

Redford plays Professor Malley,  a college teacher for rich teenagers who tries to get a promising but disaffected student back to his classes.
 But the real core of the film is represented by Arian and Ernest, two of Malley’s former students who have chosen to join the US army in order to give meaning to their lives.
Their stories intersect when Irving’s plan of action affects the two idealistic soldiers’ destiny.

Lions For Lambs is American cinema at its best and its worst at the same time.
 Rhetoric, pompous (especially Mark Isham’s soundtrack and some pointless slo-mo), made by a former heart-throb who can now only preach sermons to the audience. Ambiguous in its message: is it a call to political involvement?
An accusation against today’s lord of war? An elegy to all the casualties who “were expendable”, as John Ford would put it?
Lions For Lambs is all this, and more.
The alternated editing of the three stories is equally powerful and excruciating.
Although related to each other in some way, the protagonists of the trio of tales are unaware of what is happening to the others, making the killings and death even more senseless.
And most of all, it makes the final spur into action even tougher to accept.
Now, more than ever, America really needs to be the Home Of The Brave.  

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