London Film Festival: 'Lions For Lambs'

Matt Mueller reports:

I don’t think Tom Cruise hung around long enough to read the less-than-gushing reviews that greeted Lions For Lambs after its London Film Fest premiere. Tom showed up for his now-customary fan-meet-and-greet in London’s Leicester Square prior to the screening (he spends up to two hours on these walkabouts, leaving us groaning ticket-holders nursing sore bums waiting for him to quit pressing flesh). Anyway, back to those reviews… Time Out called Lambs “Politics For Dummys” and even The Times, which sponsored the world-premiere gala, said, “You can’t fault the anger, but the drama glows as brightly as a five-watt bulb.”

Hate to say it, but they’re both right.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the first film out of Cruise’s revived United Artists label, but—in spite of early warning signs—it wasn’t this stagebound theatre piece. Working from Matthew Michael Carnahan’s script, the intellectual antidote to his blustery work on The Kingdom, director/costar Robert Redford confines his big guns Cruise (as a hawkish senator flogging his latest “roadmap to victory” in Afghanistan) and Meryl Streep (as the cynical political journalist invited to break the story) to oak-panelled chambers, while Redford’s political science prof goads his prince-of-apathy star student Todd (Andrew Garfield) with some confrontational banter in a professorial dungeon. And, in the third, combat storyline, you can practically taste the potato flakes – or whatever it is they use to make soundstage snow these days – that Michael Pena and Derek Luke end up lying in after their unit’s botched helicopter assault leaves them stranded behind Taliban lines.

Even for a director as defiantly unadventurous as Redford, the canvas is startlingly limited and static, and with two of his three-pronged assault on the war on terror adhering to the ebb and flow of conversations, that discourse had better sizzle. But while some of Lambs’ verbal blitzkrieg is as incisive and thought-provoking as the players strive to make it, too much of it comes off as mouthpiece prosletyzing that’s shamefully basic for anyone who keeps even a wandering eye on Iraq and Afghanistan. The film already feels five years past its sell-by date – by the time it reaches DVD, it could be a wartime relic.

That’s not to say the performances aren’t committed, sparks don’t fly, and there aren’t flickers of wit and inspiration. Redford always comes armed with charisma and intellect, and Brit actor Garfield holds his own in their battle-of-the-egos exchanges. Cruise also nails his role as the youthful Republican with presidential ambitions, but Streep is too often left stranded. The film’s worst stretch comes with her unpersuasive meltdown back at station headquarters when she decides she’s not going to be part of the neo-con propaganda machine any longer – as if it’s only just dawned on someone as savvy as her veteran DC reporter’s meant to be that the media is complicit in the Middle East muddle.

The film also attempts balance – giving ample space for both sides of the argument – but I’m not sure what it gains by it. It’s not like Red State voters are going to rush out and buy tickets for diehard liberal Redford’s latest. On the plus side, he does keep the story moving fluidly between its three strands, which eventually dovetail together. Lambs’ big message is: It’s not war that kills, but apathy. Packaged in a declamatory stage play, it doesn’t get through as resoundingly as it should have.

Comments

[Chris Goldstein]

Just a reminder: Robert Redford has an Academy Award for Best Director. So does Mel Gibson, and Kevin Costner. When people tell me that the Oscars don't matter, that it's just a popularity contest, I always think, Yes, but it allows these mediocrities to continue making movies, to hog a good percentage of the funds, to expand their already monstrous egos. The filmmaking career of Robert Reford only strengthens my convictions (most of which are fictions), one such conviction being that Movie Stars are as powerful a lobby in the film industry as any.

George Clooney is the new Robert Redford. At first I thought he was the new Burt Reynolds, but now I don't think that position is tenable. However, I will not budge from my belief that Vince Vaughn is the new Chevy Chase.

[bill]

You're probably right, but I at least think that "Quiz Show" is pretty damn good.

[Steve]

I already think George Clooney is eclipsing Robert Redford, especially his interest in work as producer/director, actually.

[Chris Goldstein]

Rob Morrow ruined Quiz Show for me.

[Joel]

I am also a huge fan of Quiz Show. Our host, a fan of Roth's Zuckerman books, might agree (who could forget Turturro's performance as Alvin Pepler... um, Herbert Stempel?). As for Rob Morrow, I always imagined he was trying to do the accent of a guy from Brookline who has spent his life trying to sound like he belonged at Harvard. This subtext only makes the movie better for me, whether or not it was part of Morrow's strategy.

[bill]

When I first saw "Quiz Show", I didn't have the ear for accents that I like to think I have now but probably don't, and now I've seen the movie so many times that it just doesn't bother me.

I read "Zuckerman Unbound" last year and was delighted with that aspect of the book. I just wish he'd done more. I'm not going to start nit-picking at Philip Roth or anything, but that was the most interesting aspect of that book for me, and I wanted it to keep going.

[Joel]

I agree about Zuckerman Unbound, but I'm sure that Paul Attanasio, in writing the Quiz Show script, also remembered that Portnoy himself helped take down Charles Van Doren. Of course, Portnoy, for all his faults, wasn't the Uncle Tom of the Jews...

[Christian Toto]

It's fascinating how talented people often stumble when injecting ideology into their art. "Lions for Lambs" is a perfect example, but so, too, was Neil Young's ditty "Let's Impeach the President." Both it and "Lambs" suffer from obvious-itis, and Young and Redford should know better than to put out such lackluster material hoping to change 'hearts and minds.'