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Activist,
actor, and filmmaker Robert Redford’s "Lions for Lambs" is a
fictional dramatization of a powerful U.S. Senator’s orchestration of a
Special Forces’ secret military strategy in Afghanistan.
The
film, starring Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, and Redford himself, has not
done well at the box office despite its star power; its audience
dropped 85% in its second week. Still, it’s a film everyone should see
because it requires people to pay attention and think - despite the
U.S. government’s bipartisan pro-war brainwashing attempts.
Redford
has made the point that politicians rely on public apathy, so he wants
people to be engaged in learning how U.S. foreign policy, not only in
the Middle East but worldwide, affects them now and will impact their
lives and those of their progeny for generations. He felt "Lions
for Lambs" would challenge its audiences to become impassioned
about the war. Obviously, it
hasn’t.
The
film is claustrophobic - except for brief, harrowing scenes in
Afghanistan, and in a war room safely away from the "enemy."
And it is very talky.
Three
themes are interconnected. The first involves Cruise’s character, Sen.
Jasper Irving, and Meryl Streep’s journalist, Janine Roth (Streep
redeems herself from her "Rendition" caricature). Irving has
granted his favorite journalist a groundbreaking scoop. Meeting in
Irving’s office, they launch into a verbal exchange on the so-called
wars, which begins amicably, then heats up as the film progresses.
The
second theme deals with personal and moral values in which philosophy
professor Stephen Malley (Robert Redford) engages a student, Todd Hayes
(Andrew Garfield), a notorious slacker, in his office. The third theme
has to do with class and race, illustrated in Malley's lecture hall,
where students, including Hayes, debate moral issues.
Two
of Redford’s other students are partners in a debate, shown in a
flashback. One, Arian (Derek Luke), is Black and the other, Ernest
(Michael Pena) is Latino. Later, Arian and Ernest make it clear to
Malley that, not wishing to accrue the burden of loans for graduate
school, there’s little future for them except to volunteer for the
Army. He fruitlessly tries to talk them out of it.
We
have seen these two buddies earlier in Lt. Col. Falco’s (Peter Berg)
briefing room at Headquarters, where they are assigned to the Senator’s
secret unit set to strike Afghanistan.
Soldiers
on the mission board helicopters, which are tracked by Falco and his
men on a green LED screen back at HQ. When the choppers are attacked by
shoulder-fired rocket launchers, Ernest is wounded and falls onto the
freezing, high-plateau, deep in the snowy mountains. Arian leaps after
him into the snow, but the young men are ambushed before help comes. On
Falco’s green screen, the two appear as helpless black bugs pinned to a
fluorescent-green background.
Tom Cruise, as Sen. Irving, is convincing in his three-piece
dark suit, striped tie, and Republican hair-comb. He flatters Roth,
smiling engagingly, as only a smarmy politician can, while revealing
his secret plan.
Janine
Roth’s dialogue defines her as a liberal “progressive” who once wrote
for an independent paper that got eaten up by a conglomerate. She makes
it clear she wants to put her own spin on the story, but the Senator
almost, almost convinces her to sell it to the public as a big step
towards "victory" in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, stressing
the enemy danger to America and Iran’s nuclear capability. At one point
she counters with, "Oh, you want to kill people to save
people" (a reworking of the notorious U.S. military slogan from
the Vietnam War).
The
beauty of the film is that it avoids caricatures. Though writer Carnahan puts clichés
in the Senator’s mouth, the film avoids demonizing anyone; even the
soldiers’ attackers are obfuscated by darkness, explosions, and smoke.
Professor
Malley tries to pin Todd Hayes down as to what he’s to do with his
life; he’s brilliant but has no direction and appears not to respect
Redford (bad attendance in class) or to be grateful for his own upscale
life. Still, we can see that Malley has pushed Hayes’s buttons.
The
film ends abruptly with Tom Cruise strutting off to take up some
inconsequential matter with a lobbyist. On her way in a cab to her
office, Meryl Streep passes the Arlington National Cemetery with its
rows and rows of white crosses covering the hills. You can just see her
thinking: "Not one more!" Meanwhile, Lt. Col. Falco and his
men admit the failure of the mission. But there’ll be others; the
Senator’s plan is far-reaching.
And
Todd Hayes sits in the Student Union in front of a TV with a buddy,
watching “Breaking News!” about yet another celebrity scandal as the
crawl on the bottom of the screen delineates the failed strike in
Afghanistan and its death toll. But Hayes’s mind is far away. We are
left to wonder what he’ll do with his life: join the Peace Corps, the
Army, an antiwar organization, continue with his studies; or just hang out
in cafes picking up chicks. As Professor Malley tells him, "The
decision is yours."
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