One of the impressive things about "Lions for Lambs," a thoughtful, up-to-the-minute drama about U.S. involvement in the
Middle East, is that despite being directed by outspoken liberal Robert Redford, it is NOT simply a liberal tirade. In fact, the film makes good points on both sides -- so much that I occasionally found myself agreeing with the Republican point of view, a sensation I had not experienced in several years. Redford may have directed the film, but he didn't write it. Those honors go to Matthew Michael Carnahan, a relatively new scribe whose September film "The Kingdom" was more in the conservative, America-is-always-right line of thinking than most current-events movies are. Certainly "Lions for Lambs" is more balanced than you'd expect a Robert Redford political film to be, if occasionally a little heavy-handed and moralistic (which maybe isn't as surprising). The film has three separate stories, all occurring simultaneously in different parts of the world. In Washington, a TV news reporter named Janine Roth (Meryl Streep) interviews Republican Sen. Jasper Irving (Tom Cruise) about the Army's new strategy for winning in Afghanistan. In California, a political science professor, Malley (Redford himself), meets with a student, Todd (Andrew Garfield), to discuss the latter's sudden lack of interest in the course. And in Afghanistan, two soldiers, Arian (Derek Luke) and Ernest (Michael Pe�a), participate in that new strategy Sen. Irving was talking about, though a mishap has left them wounded and trapped in hostile territory.
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