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Shelf Beauties |
Lions For Lambs Tom Cruise stars
as Senator Jasper Irving – an up-and-coming star in the
Republican Party who
has been selected to present a new military strategy in Will anyone
listen? Lions
for Lambs
plays like a college theater project earnestly attempting to argue
everything
about the war against terror from the public’s reaction to
the press coverage
to the military strategies and the politics around it, but seems to be
preaching to the choir who watch the same debates on CNN and Fox News
each day.
It doesn’t make it more compelling or interesting just
because Tom Cruise is
prettier than Bill O’Reilly.
Writer Matthew
Michael Carnahan and director Redford don’t present anything
new or daring
unless you have been out of touch with daily news events, but maybe
that is the
point. Maybe
Carnahan and Cruise is good,
avoiding playing the senator as some sort of caricature, giving him
some soul
and a belief in what he is presenting.
Streep is perfect as the reporter trying to dig
through the spin and
figure out if this new tact will work, while also trying to maintain
some
respect for the figure before her (and, like a good reporter,
challenging while
also making sure the subject doesn’t get so angry as to cut
off the interview). Meanwhile,
Lions
for Lambs might
want to light a fire under people and get them to be more active in
today’s debate, but you can’t light a fire without
a spark, and this movie
doesn’t have enough heat to provide that spark. Lions for Lambs is rated R for some war violence and language.
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