Starring: Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Michael Peña, Andrew Garfield, and Derek Luke
Director: Robert Redford
Writer: Matthew Michael Carnahan
Release Date: November 9th, 2007

The fiercely topical Lions for Lambs relies on the existence of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it is in no way a film solely about war. Robert Redford’s latest directorial effort targets the apathy that led to the battles, and the thinking that aids in fuelling them.

The film does not trumpet one ideological perspective over another. Tom Cruise’s character, Senator Jasper Irving, is a red blooded conservative with a photo of himself posing with President Bush on his office wall. His face-off with more left-leaning journalist Janine Roth (Streep) allows for a deeply involving dialogue that raises more questions than it answers. In fact, it seems as if the entire film was engineered for this very purpose. 

Divided into three interconnected stories, the film demonstrates how policy is decided by the few, and its often disastrous results are experienced by others. Beyond the heated debate between politician and journalist, two young men are fighting for their lives in hostile Taliban territory. Meanwhile, their former professor (Redford) sits in his sunny university office, aiming to inspire a student to do more with his time at school, and with his life as a whole.   

The interconnectedness of the three stories is one of the script’s strengths. Redford utilizes it well by keeping the film moving from one scene to the next, allowing the decisions of some characters to impact others, even if they will never meet face to face. For a movie that deals with war, there is not much action to see. This picture is very ‘talky’, allowing impassioned dialogue to carry overriding messages for the audience to unpack. The film succeeds because it never loses sight of its desire to remind viewers that change can only be brought if it is chosen. The cost of war is held up to a harsh light, and the role of the media in ‘selling’ government decisions to the public is examined in detail. Grounded in the realities of today, Redford’s latest film is a testament to the times we live in. One can only hope that the audience is listening. 

A-