Yesterday when I pulled Lions For Lambs, I was a bit afraid because the cover art looked incredibly similar to Sean “look at me, I’m a famous liberal fucktard” Penn’s All the King’s Men, so there were concerns that I was going to be watching the same kind of movie. Turns out I was going to be watching the same kind of movie: an activist rant that does everything it can to present its side with a bias that rivals the Fox News Network, trickling in opposing arguments as pale and misguided as a Michael Moore movie to try and prove that it’s better than you and anything running through your tiny little brain. Blah.
Robert Redford presents a pro-war argument without letting anyone get a word in edge-wise taken from three different perspectives: the guys actually AT war way, the senator/press reporter that shows the public way and the dumbass liberal student vs. the dumbass conservative “how important is it to make a change” professor way. Why these three? Because apparently they have something to do with each other. The senator is launching a military initiative featuring two soldiers currently AT war that were former students of dumbass conservative professor. So you’re probably thinking all Magnolia style that it’s one of those “what a small world this really is” kind of movies but the fact that these three groups are joined mouth to anus has as much meaning and value as the film with the same fucking plotline except in Human Centipede there wasn’t nearly as much talking, which I can almost respect more when comparing these two “works of art.”
Taking the war on terror and presenting the argument of the damage that it would do to both Iraq and the United States if we left the job half finished (an argument I actually agree with), Lions for Lambs attempts to raise questions on the value of war, the idea of America serving as global police officers, and why hippies should go to college (almost not kidding…), but fizzles by creating one-sided arguments that Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh would stand and applaud if their legs could support the weight of their ego. It’s the same problem that I had with The Great Debaters except this one was a non-stop force feed of “kill ‘em all, kill ‘em all” bullshit spouted by known “give peace a chancers” Tom Cruise and Meryl Street.
You’ll probably notice that I haven’t really mentioned much of a story, because there isn’t one. Again raping the whole Magnolia idea, Lions for Lambs sets these three different events in a single hour of time, so your 92 minutes is actually encompassing 60 minutes, but like I mentioned, they have practically nothing to do with each other. This isn’t a movie, it’s a boring debate by two opponents that are obviously blowing each other because not once does this movie actually take the kind of cheap shots that inspire the uproars that have caused this country to separate the lines of red vs. blue to “Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robot” levels. It convinces you that its subjects are dancing on coals but conveniently neglects to tell you that those coals aren’t lit.
Lions for Lambs tries to send the message that this whole war on terror is getting such a bad rap because America is only reacting to the chess board in front of them instead of thinking moves ahead and understanding the implications of their actions further down the road (that’s the best way I could explain it). It succeeds in this but only because it spends 90 minutes doing only this. It’s a snooze-fest that does nothing but preach to the choir, and I seem to recall sleeping through that back in the days before I got banned from going to church.
With no structure, no valid counter-arguments, no story, no excitement, and no reason to give a shit; I’m probably being generous here, but I’m giving Lions for Lambs a 4 dustbusters out of 10. It wasn’t nauseating, but it definitely wasn’t inspiring at all.
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