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Lions for Lambs (2007)

By Wayne Scheer

 

Most critics have panned Robert Redford’s new film, Lions for Lambs, for being too talky/preachy while offering no answers, and for stringing together two or three stories without completing any of them.  And they’re right. I’d also add that the movie is difficult because it offers no "good guy" to root for. All the possible heroes are flawed and powerless and even the would-be villain can easily be seen as heroic. The film has little to offer other than to turn a mirror to our own confusion. 

 

But that’s enough for me.

 

When the screen went suddenly black and I realized the film had ended, my wife and I sat there staring. Part of us expected more and part of us knew that more might only bring the film to some kind of Hollywood conclusion where we’d feel satisfied with the story lines, and…entertained. But for me, the film ended where it should have ended–with an absolutely perfect look of confusion and anxiety on the face of the young Everyman, Todd, a student, played effectively by Andrew Garfield, who throughout the film had been scolded by his college professor (Redford) for not taking himself seriously. 

 

Afterwards, we roamed the theater’s parking lot, not really forgetting where we parked the car, but not caring. We were lost in our thoughts and memories, and we were talking. When we finally found the car, we continued talking before we turned on the engine and kept talking on the ride home. The movie even inspired me to read reviews, something I rarely do, and write one, something I’ve never done. To me, that’s a good movie. Even if it’s not "art."

 

Lions for Lambs asks, what kind of mark are we going to leave on this earth? The question has inspired two of Redford’s students to volunteer for service in Iraq. Redford tries in vain to talk them out of it, just as he tries to persuade Todd (Garfield) to apply himself to something more than the next fraternity party.

 

Interspersed between action shots in Iraq is more talk. This time between an earnest journalist, played by Meryl Streep, and an arrogant, absolutely-sure-of-himself U.S. Senator, played by Tom Cruise.   The Cruise character, Jasper Irving, has a new strategy that he believes will enable us to win the war. He wants to give the story to journalist Janine Roth (Streep) because he believes the notoriety will catapult him to the presidency. We watch her question him respectfully while he blusters and pontificates. Cruise is so forceful and confident; we begin to wonder if perhaps he does have all the answers.

 

Streep’s character comes alive after she leaves the Senator’s office and returns to her editor in the newsroom. She knows that a positive piece she had written about Irving helped elect him to the Senate. She now questions what to do with the scoop handed to her while her editor (more talk) wants to lead with it. 

 

If this quick summary sounds like an enactment of a college bull session rather than visual entertainment, it’s because it seemed that way to me, too. But that’s what I liked about the movie. Certainly, it had brilliant bits of acting–the aforementioned Cruise bluster and Garfield’s confused expression are nothing short of brilliant. And Streep’s pulling at her sweater while playing with the thermostat in her editor’s office is both hilarious and poignant, well worth the price of admission on its own right. Still what holds this film together for me is the sense that Redford captured on film exactly where we are as a nation and a people at this moment.

 He offers no answers–only confusion and anxiety and the desire to do something about it. Our frustration is we don’t know what.