Lions for Lambs
Fri 16 November 2007
Carlos Robinson, Bachelor of Journalism
Four years after President Bush declared “mission accomplished” in Iraq, it was time for a movie like Lions for Lambs to ask strong questions about US foreign policy.
The timing could not have been better, with 2007 the deadliest year for US troops in Iraq, and the cost of the war also passed the trillion-dollar mark.
The main thrust of the film is that US troops are lions being lead by lambs, or politicians back in Washington, far removed from the battlefields, who keep spouting newfangled policies that make little difference on the ground.
This means that this is a movie about ideas, so most of the action consists of swapping camera angles between talking heads, although the dialogue is broken up with some fighting sequences in Afghanistan.
The film boasts an impressive cast of Meryl Streep, Robert Redford and Tom Cruise, who plays an ambitious Republican, Senator Jasper Irving. It can be difficult to take Tom Cruise seriously as a politician, but his performance is so eerily spot-on that at one point the film felt like Republican propaganda.
The movie also takes a while to get to the point. But in the end, the film poses some stark questions that a democratic society should be able to answer. It can only be hoped that plenty of Americans see this movie and take in its message before primary voting for the next US president begins on January 3 next year. Otherwise, a real-life Senator Jasper Irving could become the next lamb to lead the lions.
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