Lions for Lambs

Review by Anthony Morris

Despite the big name cast assembled by director Robert Redford, Lions For Lambs (the title refers to the way brave soldiers are often lead by incompetents) is pretty much a no-budget little independent film. 

Of the three stories that make up the film, two are just conversations between two people together in a room - one involves Redford as a university teacher trying to persuade his snotty slacker student to get involved in the issues of the day, the other has Tom Cruise as a smarmy congressman trying to sell a Vietnam-era approach to fighting in Afghanistan to Meryl Streep's reporter - while the third has two wounded US soldiers stuck atop a wintry Afghanistan mountaintop while enemy forces move in. 

The idea is to provide an overall view on the way the War on Terror is going wrong: idealistic types encourage people to get involved, only to discover that getting involved means your incompetent leaders send you off to die. 

It's all well acted, and the conversations are a lot more interesting in their back-and-forth than they usually are in this kind of film, but it remains closer to a civics class than a fun evening out. 

Still, it is relatively content to allow viewers to make up their own minds: bleeding hearts will be appalled at the tragic waste of life and the apathy of today's youth, evil right wing types will be pleased to see that the system where the poor and black die for rich white men is still ticking over nicely.

3 out of 5

Lions for Lambs
Australian release: 8th October, 2007
Cast: Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise
Director: Robert Redford
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