Outstanding Anti-War Film: “Lions for Lambs”
I highly recommend the movie “Lions for Lambs”. I saw it on a recent plane flight. It was so good that I watched it twice. It is one of the most powerful anti-war films I have seen.
Produced by Robert Redford, it stars Redford, Merryl Streep, and Tom Cruise. Streep plays a news reporter, Cruise plays an ambitious pro-war Republican Senator, and Redford plays a political science professor. Their performances are outstanding, but they are almost upstaged by several unknown actors — Ernest Rodriguez, Peter Berg, Derek Luke, Andrew Carfield, and Kevin Dunn — who play other important roles.
I’m not sure how timeless this film will be, because it is extremely current. The story takes place in 2007, and concerns the U.S. led wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Secretary of State Rice, and even Colin Powell appear in photographs.
The film weaves together three related stories: a reporter interviewing a Senator about a new development in the war on terrorism, a Special Forces military operation in Afghanistan, and a college professor trying to convince his students to do something meaningful with their lives.
The dialog is not the usual clever Hollywood banter. It is so natural and realistic that it almost seems that the actors were given loose scripts and told to improvise their lines based on what they really think (although I don’t know if that was how it was done). Even Tom Cruise, who plays the pro-war Senator, has important, thought-provoking things to say.
Highly recommended.
Links to further information about the film:
- Official “Lions for Lambs” website
- IMDB entry about the movie
- Wikipedia entry about the movie
- Movie trailer at YouTube
- Winner of film-sponsored “Take a Stand” video contest
