Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.

The latest work from director Robert Redford (QUIZ SHOW; A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT; ORDINARY PEOPLE) is part acting workshop, part debate and part conversation instigator. On all three levels, the film succeeds, although not always in equal measure. Telling three loosely interconnected stories, Redford targets not the politicians and corporate giants that have long been the target in many films about the current war in the Middle East. Instead his mission is, in many ways, more interesting: he's going after those who are doing absolutely nothing (in his eyes) to stop the war they allegedly are against. Redford calls to task the media and young people (particularly college students) to rise up the way they did when he was a younger man during the Vietnam War. He has no use or reason for hiding his agenda, but he still manages to avoid preaching to his audience about right and wrong. If anything, the lines are even more blurred as a result of this film.

My favorite story is the most deceptively simple. A young, rising star senator in the Republican party (Tom Cruise) invites a journalist (Meryl Streep) to his office for the day to give her an exclusive story about the next stage in the war. She was helpful to him early in his career, and he is returning the favor in spades. The scene is well written, to be sure, but putting these two powerhouse actors in a room together and watching them navigate is a rare treat. Streep is a master of mannerisms and under-the-breath comments; Cruise is earnest and so certain what he's doing is the right thing that the answers to her questions flow from his lips like gospel. This is the best work like this I've seen Cruise do since Magnolia, and it reminds us that he should focus more on dramatic acting and less on being a major action hero. The scenes between Cruise and Streep are a dance that become a dare for her not to run the story. More than that, the storyline is a bigger dare for the media to dig deeper every time the administration or the military issues a press release or has a new conference. Don't simply take their word for it just to get your story on the air faster. Confirm, verify and investigate, is the message.

The second story is also largely about two people in a room. Redford plays a political science professor, while Andrew Garfield plays a one-time prize student whose interest in the class and in making a difference is waning. Redford grills the poor kid for what seems like hours (although I'm fairly certain the three storylines are supposed to take place in the same time frame, about 90 minutes), digging for what exactly in this boy's mind has changed. This intriguing back-and-forth is perhaps the most damming of its intended target: young people who don't see how this war influences their lives in any way since there's no draft. Somewhere in them, they know the war is wrong, but they aren't driven to protest against it. Redford wants to know why. Performance wise, the segment isn't quite as strong as the Cruise-Streep one, but it will probably provoke the most discussion among the younger people who see this movie.

The least interesting sequence involves two former students of Redford's (Derek Luke and Michael Pena), who have decided to change the system from within by enlisting in the war. It just so happens they are in the first wave of soldiers carrying out the very plan that Cruise is briefing Streep on. When their plane is hit, the two men bail out and land in the thick of it. Luke's leg is embedded in the Afghani snow, while Pena's body is so broken, he can barely roll over to shoot oncoming enemies. This race to see who will get to them first — the rescue team or the evildoers — just isn't handled very well. I never felt the sense of urgency or suspense I know I was supposed to, perhaps because the entire sequence is handled so conventionally. Flashbacks showing the two men in Redford's classroom are more vital to the overall theme of the film, but the battle scenes aren't nearly as compelling as the war of words in the other two sequences.

Of all the current films about the war in the Middle East, LIONS FOR LAMBS does the best job of asking the most important questions as directly as possible. It's an interesting, if not entirely convincing, snapshot of America today, and I hope it does succeed in its mission to spark discussion and debate among those that agree with each other as well as with those that don't. What works in this film, works very well. What doesn't can easily be pushed aside to make room for the far more thought-provoking ideas at work here.

Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com