Lions for Lambs

Lions for Lambs

Directed by Robert Redford (R)

A politician and a journalist face off over the war in Iraq.

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Most political films offer a heaping spoonful of sugar to help the important issues go down, said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. Lions for Lambs is “all medicine, and doesn’t try to hide the fact,” bravely presenting director Robert Redford’s political concerns without even a drop of Hollywood’s usual plot sweeteners. Redford’s first directorial effort in seven years intertwines three pairs of characters: a liberal journalist (Meryl Streep) and a Republican senator (Tom Cruise); a California professor (Redford) and his apathetic student; and two ex-students of the professor who are serving as soldiers in Afghanistan. Together, they broach nearly every topic on the national agenda, particularly “the arrogance of war-on-terror politicians” and “the superficiality of the press.” But Redford’s talking heads never know when to stop, and they argue each issue to death, said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. His movie tries hard to stand for something, but it ends up as a “feature-film version of the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine.” Most of the lectures are “too dull and self-satisfied” to engage us on anything more than an intellectual level, said Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times. Without Streep and Cruise, “looking like an old lion and a young jackal circling each other warily in the jungle,” Lions for Lambs would be as entertaining as a policy debate.