Lions for Lambs (2007)

Excellent but underrated film

Absolutely Brilliant!

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Compact, enthralling piece that delves into war from political, academic, media and military (as well as personal) perspectives. A lot for 1.5 hours! Refford's best directorial effort since his Oscar-winning Ordinary People. So many things revealed in this treatment, things often not mentioned in public. After viewing the movie we have a better idea why. (But unfortunately no mention of the military/industrial conglomerates that profit from conflicts.) As usual Streep is fascinating to watch but not so Redford's character who comes across as too smug. (viewed 1/17)

This is a movie that had great potential, great actors, a decent concept, (however you feel about the topic of the Bush initiated wars). My problem with the movie is that it seemed to end halfway through the story. Just when you start to get engaged in the characters story the movie ends with no conclusion as to why any thing you've been watching has happened. (spoiler may be ahead) We have an anti-war college professor (Robert Redford), engaging a bright student who hasn't been coming to class about his potential and the reasons why he seems to have dropped out of life. To do this he relates a story of his two students (one Latino, the other Black) who against his advice joined the military to get money to go to grad school. He tells this student that he admires them for their willingness to engage in life even though he thinks they made the wrong decision.Next we have a reporter (Meryl Streep) talking to a Republican senator (Tom Cruise) about a new government initiative to do anything necessary to win the "War on Terror". The report challenges the Republican parties lies that got the US into the war in the 1st place, and questions the new senator about publishing this latest escalation initiative. He retorts back that basically it was the compliance of the press that allow them to get away with it, and she agree's to her paper's part in all of that. Saying news is no longer about investigating facts it's about ratings, and she's not responsible for that. Through their talking, you get to feel that the new senator wants to run for President soon, and he want's the media to view him as a warrior who will end this "War on Terror" war by "Doing whatever it takes" (Bomb civilians, torture innocent people, kill more soldiers).Then we see glimpses of the two soldiers on a frozen mountain (one wounded) fighting off a brigade of Taliban soldiers with the mighty American military sitting behind a drone screen debating how to rescue them. They drop bombs that don't kill the Taliban soldiers but make them angry enough to advance the attack. The bombing run does however convince the two American soldiers (who just happen to be the college students the professor was talking about) to commit suicide by standing up and firing at this whole brigade of angry Taliban soldiers knowing they can not win. Only to be killed minutes before another drone strike, and a helicopter can reach them. OK, now that you're engaged in the 3 story-lines, what happens? How do they all connect? Well actually they don't. The story ends with the reporter going back to her paper saying she doesn't want to publish the exclusive story she just was offered by the senator and her boss threaten her job if she chooses not to. (Does she or doesn't she, we never find out). How about the professor's student, does he now engage in life after hearing this story (well, we just hope so, but it ends before we know if he comes to the next class or not.) The two students who joined the military are dead. Does the professor know this and is this part of a campaign to dissuade others from joining the military to get into grad school (well, we just don't know). Does the senator run for president are more lies published (well, we just don't know)..The movie ends and you have no story connections to the 3 story-lines, no conclusions (other than the 2 dead soldiers).This is a movie that needs an ending... How the script writers, director and actors all missed that is beyond me.Yes, I get the moral implication and statements being made here: The young (minority) men with potential who are dying in a war that was built on a lie just to get money to go to graduate school. Other wealthy white students that do not engage with politics and the world around them, but exist for their own pleasure. An American press that is no longer investigating and reporting news but rather is run by big business interested only in money and ratings. And crazy dangerous (mostly Republican) politicians who do not care about people, especially those being killed in the wars they started.But really does this make for a good movie? Well perhaps, if it had a decent script and story-line that was somehow connected, however this movie does not! This is not a reflection on the actors, who all did their part; This is a reflection on the script writers, producers, and directors who all should of known how to make a better movie about this subject.

When this movie came out, it was panned by the right as being "too anti-Bush" and anti-war. Well, what could we expect from Hollywood other than that? Now, 7 years later, the story line seems eerily prophetic. Senator Irving (Cruise), responding to the journalist's (Streep) question "Why not just pull out?", says (paraphrasing here), "One, Iraq goes back to being a third world country in ruins, two, Iran will have nuclear capability, and three, Afghanistan will continue to be the crap-hole it is, with a strengthened Taliban as a result." Funny, this is exactly what Barack Obama has accomplished. His pulling out of Iraq has destroyed what was a budding democracy, his weakness in dealing with Iran has them on the verge of having a bomb, and his pending promised pull-out from Afghanistan will have made 10 years of war there all for nothing, at the cost of an indeterminable amount of "blood and treasure". And hundreds of young men and women walking around on aluminum "legs", trying to make do with plastic arms, or dead.... or worse. And yes, Virginia, the Taliban (and al-qaeda) are indeed strengthened, despite the Obama claim that they were "decimated". All told, a good movie. Great performances by Cruise (very believable as the either idealistic or phony (depending on your political point of view) "rising star" senator, Redford as your typical overpaid anti-war ideologue, and Streep as the reporter who thinks it's more important to report the news as she sees it as opposed to simply reporting the news. A great "message" movie, whether you take it from the point of view of the right or the left.

****SPOILERS**** We get three different views in the film about the goings on in the US and abroad in the war in Afghanistan as well to a lesser extent Iraq from three different points of view. The first has to do with US Senator Jasper Irving, Tom Cruise, being interviewed by ANX news reporter Jannine Roth, Meryl Streep, about his new and revolutionary efforts in winning the war as well as hearts and minds of the Afghan people. Sen. Irving is full of optimism in how the war in Afghanistan is now going with a major US military offensive in the offering, when the snow covering the Afghan mountains melts, in the spring. While bragging to Mrs.Roth about how great things are going to be a US Army helicopter is shot down over Afghanistan with two of the US military personal on it Earnset Rodriguez, Michael Pena,& Arian Finch, Derek Luke, jumping out and surviving in the snow below.We then have UCLA history professor Stephen Malley, Robert Redford, having a jam or BS session with one of his most brilliant student Todd Hayes, Andrew Garfield, who despite skipping classes gets nothing but straight A's. Malley wants Todd to take things seriously or else he'll end up disillusioned with life and may well turn to drugs and alcohol to makes things more interesting for himself. As for Finch & Rodriguez, whom we find out were once students of Prof.Malley their holding on to dear life in the snow as a battle hardened Taliban unit is slowly closing in on them for the kill.We then shoot back to Mrs. Roth interviewing Sen. Jasper who's a little bit unnerved in his optimistic views in forecasting the war's rosy future that both Rodriguez & Finch are involved in her knowing that she's heard the same line of BS some 40 years ago, in 1967, as a collage reporter about the war in Vietnam which turned out to be a total disaster for the US. It's not that long that we go back to Prof.Malley telling the not to attentive,he seemed to have better things on his mind, Todd Hayes about his life as a US Army servicemen in Vietnam and a protested during the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention where he ended up getting his skull fractured by a policemen's baton! As all this chit chat and mindless talk is going on back in the real world, the war in Afghanistan, all efforts to save both Riodriguez & Finch by their fellow US Special Forces personnel falls short with them, blazing away at their attackers, going down in a blaze of glory as the Taliban catches up with them and blasts the two brave American fighting men to kingdom come!With Mrs. Roth now back at her ANX newspaper office she's told by her boss, Kiven Dunn, to go with the totally BS story that Sen. Jasper gave her about how great the war in Afghanisatn is going to be after the winter snow melt. Knowing better but, with a sick mother that she's taking care of, needing the job to pay her expensive she goes with it in promoting the endless war that she knows is a lost cause just like Sen. Jasper's future political aspirations.P.S Very accurate film about how hopeless the both wars in Iraq & Afghanistan really are. In fact the war in Iraq ended a few years later after the movie was released with the US installed,if you can call it that, Iraqi Government far worse for the Iraqi people then the one it replaced which was that of Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein! As for the War in Asfghastain it's still going on with record US losses and no end, unless the US & it's NATO allies withdrew, in sight! That even after reportedly, if we believe what were told by the US Government & media, having the head of the Al Qeada Terrorist Organization, who was the very reason why the US went to war against Afghanistan in the first place, Osama Bin-Leden gunned down in his hideout by a squad of Navy Seals in May 2011.