Movies Nov. 21, 2007 -- Before Its Time, and Not In a Good Way

Robert Redford is a tremendous director. Quiz Show Is an absolutely fantastic film and probably one of my favorites. He is a good judge of material and his taste in shots and actors is impeccable. That being said, I don't know what happened with this movie.

The film has an incredible cast touting Tom Cruise, Merryl Streep, and Redford himself as three of the main characters. The supporting cast does a nice job as well, in particular I'm becoming very fond of seeing Michael Peña from Ridley Scott's World Trade Center and Shooter. Despite what many are saying I feel that the actors deal extremely well with the material that they were given, and the movie was directed well, but that brings me to my point.

Why is this film not being embraced by everyone in America? And why am I only giving it a one and half star rating? The acting is sound, the filming was done well - it's not the score. So, what's the problem? Oh, maybe it was the writer...

Well, I'd love to blame the flaws of this film on the writer himself, but this is actually what I don't understand. The writer was none other than Matthew Michael Carnahan who actually just had another political movie hit the screen - The Kingdom. The fact is, The Kingdom was a highly political film with a pretty anti-war message - sound familiar? And it was great! So WHAT HAPPENED?

Nothing. And that's the issue.

The fact is that Lions for Lambs is a movie where nothing Is accomplished or resolved. We spend an hour and twenty-eight minutes watching a group of soldiers attempt to take some territory, a reporter interview a politician, and a college student meet with his professor. The problem is that none of these stories resolve!

The invasion hits a snag, but we never hear if it's successful because that portion of the story shifts focus after the problems arise,. Then the reporter gets her scoop, but by the end of the movie, we still don't know what story she is going to write. Finally, we are left in the closing moments of the film wondering if the student is actually going to take the deal which was proposed to him within the first fifteen minutes of the film. But nothing actually happens!

The movie is a lot of talk and a lot of questioning, and I suppose that was the goal of the piece: to generate discussion and to inform the uninformed. The only problem is that the film never seems to take a position. Every point in this film has a fairly decent counter-point and by the end I feel that the audience is left with a wash. Those who were pro-war are still pro-war, those who were against the war are still against it, and those who were apathetic before the film are just as apathetic after, but they probably all share the experience of feeling that their time has been wasted.

In the end I have to say that I understand and empathize for the kind of film that Redford and company were attempting to create, and the truth is that if this movie came out in twenty or thirty years, people would probably be able to enjoy it more. Having had the ambiguity solved by time, the film will have more meaning; the viewers will know that decisions were made after and resulted in the world we live in today, but, as it stands, Lions for Lambs is unfortunately just the tossing around of a meaningless list of facts. And if audiences wanted numbers and dates, they'd pick up a newspaper.

88 min. Directed by: Robert Redford. United Artists

Rated: R

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- Clyde Masters