Lions for Lambs

Director: Robert Redford

Starring: Robert Redford, Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep

This is a welcome return for Redford to the role of director, and the script is marvellously written by Matthew Carnahan, whose recent works also include The Kingdom from earlier this year. Lions for Lambs gives a post-War in Iraq perspective on American’s relationship with terror, underlining to the audience how tragic a waste war truly is.

We are invited to follow three elements of the plot, the most exciting probably following Roth (Streep). She’s a Washington reporter who manages to get an interview with politically ambitious Republican Senator Irving (Cruise). He is keen to stress his new plan designed to enhance military progress in Afghanistan and Iraq, but, like us all, she seems unconvinced. Meanwhile, on the other side of the coast, a political science professor with Democrat sympathies, played by the legendary Robert Redford, tries to instil some liberal passion into a disappointing student. He wants him to do something worthy in his life, like taking an interest in his country’s political situations. And all the way in Afghanistan, some of the professor’s former pupils are battling it out in the mountains, and ultimately make up the focus of the plot.

Each aspect is linked elegantly together by the clever use of flashback, and it is revealed that the soldiers are carrying out the military plan suggested by Senator Irving, a strategic notion to try and control the passes in the mountains thus preventing the advance of the Taliban. We are left to decide whether or not this plan is really the right one.

This is certainly an intellectual film, for as you watch you feel actively involved and want desperately to piece all parts of the story together. Streep and Redford are truly brilliant, and love him or hate him, Cruise really brings the film together, portraying Senator Irving with great perfection. Indeed, he skilfully makes the senator out to be wholly mesmerising and convincing, making this, dare I say, a most impressive performance.

Jam-packed with anti-Bush war sentiment, this well crafted political drama really hits home and will have you thinking well after you leave the cinema.

Laura Sparshot