liberal dose of simplicity
Don't get it. Just don't get it. If you have any sense or insight into the world you'll already know all the stuff that this film ponderously pummels into you with dull thudding blows to the head.
If you don't know how the world works then you'll never get past the first 10 minutes before falling asleep or being distracted by trivia (and that is a very, very bad thing according to Uncle Robert) and you won't be reading this.



Folly Of The War On Rhetoric
"Useful new things to be said about the debacle in Iraq are in very short supply. I'm not sure that's what "Lions for Lambs" intends to demonstrate, but it does, exhaustingly. Essentially, if I have this right, we should never have invaded Iraq, but now that we're there, (1) we can't very well leave, and (2) we can't very well stay, so (3) the answer is, stay while in the process of leaving." Roger Ebert

'All The Right Moves', and 'All The Right Words': apathy and cynicism, self interest is to have the best life you can have the easiest way, risk , bravery, say what you mean and mean what you say, don't live over a safety net, well reasoned arguments and journalist integrity, making the right choices or don't make any at all, and people who have the least to give, give the most. We have all heard these words and phrases time and again, and in this film we hear them in spades. Aha, I gave my own!

Robert Redford started out with a smart script. He was able to recruit the best of the best, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise and himself. The time seemed ripe, we have a far off war in Afghanistan and Iraq, we have an administration who fooled us all, we have the media who went along with the administration, and we have the American Public full of apathy all. What's not to like? Somewhere, something went wrong in this film. The public was not prepared for 94 minutes of moralizing and facing the music so to speak. We would prefer to move on with our lives, taking the easy way out, why not? What the film forgot was that we pay to be entertained, this was not entertainment, this was a lecture and we didn't want any of it. Too bad.

"Lions for Lambs is so square it's like something out of the gray twilight glow of the golden age of television. Even the military plot, which clunks, seems to be taking place on stage. Yet Carnahan's writing ignites familiar issues with vigor and snap; there's audacity in its attempt to seize us with nothing but a war of rhetoric. Maybe Lions for Lambs wouldn't seem like such a folly in a movie culture that risked making more follies like it." Owen Glieberman

A film that speaks to us all, but all of us don't want to hear.
Recommended. prisrob 05-14-08


The Electric Horseman

The French Lieutenant's Woman

A Few Good Men (Special Edition)

Superb
I was amazed at how short this film was. It concerns an hour in the lives of several different people and runs for only 20 minutes longer than this.

In this hour you see some of the best performances from top Hollywood stars for a long time. For me the best was Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep who are utterly convincing in their roles.

Based on other reviews I was not expecting much - often the best way to approach a film. I'm pleased to say it far exceeded my expectations and is a superb film I am happy to recommend.


very decent movie
one of the better films of last year this is solid and enjoyable with a great performance from tom cruise who reminds us that he can act.worth a look

Flawed but absorbing
I watched this on DVD last night and was still thinking about it when I woke up this morning. Not, I hasten to add, because any of the views it propounds were new to me, or staggeringly well-put, but because I am always interested in eavesdropping on America talking to itself about its own failures. This is a country that we Europeans don't really understand: it's a fantasy land, a dream, in many ways a delusion. But it's so powerful that to not be interested in how it is currently shaping its future leaders is foolish. Artists of Robert Redford's generation won't be around much longer, and the film's critique of today's more shallow celebrities -- and the media that promote them -- is sharply telling.
In the end, I felt the material might have worked better as a play structured around the two central duologues, but it really did hold my attention with very good performances and a new kind of call to arms for America's youth.

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