lions for lambs

sure, a handful of movies have touched on the theme of the american war on terror, and politics, but none did so as directly and with such candor. neither is this one a call for anti-war sentiments in essence, because that's not the message it sends out. robert redford did a good job in threading the stories and intertwining them in a cause-and-effect sort of way reminiscent of crash and (maybe a little bit) babel but still made it look refreshing, mostly through snippets and flashbacks that slowly lead the audience to the subtle connections, not what you'd usually expect from a stereotypical hollywood flick of this nature. too bad it didn't do too well in the box office, i guess people are either all apathetic about the political landscape or too disillusioned to give a damn. either way it's their loss.


the characters and events may be fictional, but the issues at heart and the big pictures aren't. redford, tom cruise and meryl streep all did an incredible job in presenting the debate about the war (with a hint of over-acting from tom cruise), albeit being quite 'dry' at times which may annoy certain individuals who see it as 'for the sake of the argument'. it doesn't necessarily contain the action/suspense you'd expect from a hollywood production, but what it lacked in fanfare it made up in depth of characters. but somehow the plot makes you feel that it just maybe underutilized the characters by restricting the scale of the plot and could have done more with them, because the whole thing seemed just a tad like a glorified high school debate.

nevertheless, the moment for me came when the political science professor was in the restaurant having a discussion with two of his most gifted students about their decisions to go to war in afganistan in an effort to "do something now". and in reply to their justification that they could "still go to grad school and do greather things when they come back", the prof simply said "if ". that was it for me. that simple one-syllable word is in my opinion THE most powerful thing spoken in the entire film.

sometimes there is just so much more in the things that were left unsaid.


oh and by the way: the title is from a german general’s world war I observation of english soldiers bravely sacrificing themselves by the tens of thousands, which redford solemnly quotes to the unengaged student at the climax of his argument: “Never have I seen such lions led by such lambs”.