Lions For Lambs

Honestly, Tom Cruise hasn't made a decent movie since Top Gun. There are some that will argue that Cocktail was a good movie. No it wasn't. Eyes Wide Shut? People only liked that movie because of the gratuitous nakedness. And Mission Impossible? More like Mission Imposter.


So when Lions For Lambs came out, I should have known better. It stars Tom Cruise as a Senator who's working on a new strategy in the war on terror. What drew me to the movie was that it was directed my Robert Redford, a decent actor. However, Meryl Streep was also in it. Not so decent.


In this movie, we are presented with 3 plots - Robert Redford as a professor at a college trying to engage a student whom he thinks has potential. Tom Cruise is in a dialog with Streep, a reporter to one of the big newspapers. He is trying to promote the new strategy. And finally, some troops have been deployed to Afghanistan to implement this new strategy and they are getting creamed.


Almost the entire time I kept thinking, when is this movie going to start? Where is it going? I figured the 3 had to be tied together by more than circumstantial activities. But no. That was the movie. Was anything resolved? Nope. Conflict resolution? Was there conflict? Good feelings at the end. Nada. What was the point of this movie? I know it was a jab at the Bush Adminsitration, not that I have a problem with that. Are we supposed to start looking at the bigger picture in life? Maybe.


I think this is the type of movie where you need to watch the directors cut or his interview at the end so that you can understand what the hell his intention was. As far as entertainment value, this movie had none.


Lions For Lambs is 92 minutes long, but it's a long and agonizing 92 minutes. The movie is rated R for violence, if you can make out the violence on the dark blue on black screen that is supposed to be night, and some language. Overall, I give this movie 2 stars. I figure there's some point in there somewhere and I can understand actors and directors using their stage as a place to push their agenda. But at least make it somewhat entertaining. Booo!