4 adjectives: Solid, smart, gripping and thought-provoking.
Don’t you love it when you can say these about a movie? The movie was made in 2007. 3 years later, it is still very relevant.
The movie follows three different storylines:
*Reporter Janine Roth (Meryl Streep) interviews Senator Irving (Tom Cruise) in his office.
*Professor Malley (Robert Redford) is talking to a student –Todd (Andrew Garfield) – in his office.
*And in Afghanistan, a group of American soldiers are leaving the “base” for another mission.Peter Berg plays Lt. Col. Falco and he is in charge.
The mission has started a couple of minutes before Irving started speaking to Janine. His purpose and demands are clear. He wants the story to be done by Janine, supporting this mission. Even though Janine tries to question motives and reminds him of the past mistakes, Irving makes great confrontations himself.
At the university, we find out that Todd used to be a great student but he seems indifferent, cynical and apolitical. As their meeting progresses, both Todd and the professor make great points on war, politics, individuality and choices.
The mission fails miserably with only two soldiers surviving. As we watch to see if the rescue team will get there on time, we will get to know more about these two soldiers’ backgrounds…
This movie is simple. It presents you a lot of point-of-views and it gives them well. All the characters seem right. The movie tells a fine story and holds your interest through fine acting, a brilliant battle of wills/points and a really good script. Perfect direction by Redford.
You need to see the movie to see why it is special. I loved finding out why those two soldiers went to battle and the reason was something I hadn’t seen coming…
At 6.2 on IMDB, this movie is one of the most underrated movies I’ve ever seen. It breaks my heart that Fight Club got an 8.8. Yes, F.C was good, really good. But 8.8 for Fight Club and 6.2 for Lions for Lambs? Of course, these movies have nothing in common. Of course, they belong to totally different genres. But to me, humanity and some solid reality check beats originality. I also happened to watch these on the same day. If you have seen Fight Club, you probably remember how Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden kept asking who Edward Norton’s character would want to fight. He even said Gandhi. Well, then. I am making Robert Redford fight David Fincher. And in my club, Robert beat the crap out of Fincher with this one.
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