Lions for Lambs (2007)

Pretty Good

Absolutely the worst movie.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

As the title, the pace of the movie gets us into it, and when the climax is going to be reached, nothing happens. I expected more about the character's destiny or some repercussions, but that's it. Great crescendo, with no finale.

Boring as hell lost interest after the first 30 minutes.

a great movie. this is the decent start point for define it. first, for performances. second, for the perspective about politic and war. not the last, for the admirable job of Robert Redford. sure, after many films about similar subject, it is easy to criticize it. but it is more than a story of idealism and fall of noble intentions. it is a film about rolling history. about its trues and about the need of desire to change everything. not as expression of naivety . but as duty. short, a real great film.

Released in 2007, I had the good fortune of watching this at the behest of a friend who is a Redford fan. It is a movie that I would buy on DVD and here is why. It is somewhat prophetic to what now exists seven years later. In 2007, this would NOT have made it popular to watch. After all, it dared to criticize the use of the press for good propaganda and the use of our universities to recruit to causes instead of resolving the real problems in the 'political science', aka political manipulation, of the real promises of democracy. Some critics found the dialogue overwhelming. In 2007, especially in America and its allied nations like Canada, it would be. After all, it dares to challenge three things that we fail to deal with, still today: the arrogance of the American, and all western, politicians, that it is only they who know how to solve the problems of the world; the incompetence of our modern 'journalists' in really knowing and fulfilling their moral and legal duty in our democracies, to expose the truth, instead breaking our daily news down into sound or picture bytes that only satisfy their personal economies; BUT, and most importantly, the blatant incompetence of even 'educated' citizens to recognize that 'democracy' is NOT the right to 'get smart enough' so that the system can be manipulated to make the individual comfortable. Indeed, the final frames of that picture (where the student, whom Redford's university professor character is trying to reawaken to his potential role in real democracy, sits in front of a television screen watching Afghanistan war news roll by as the greater escape of shallow entertainment is surfed) should meld the message for all watchers. At least, this film should awaken the conscience of those who have not fallen into the shallow belief that, as long as they are properly entertained, clothed and fed, it matters not what happens to others, even if it is just down the block. No. In 2007, this movie would not have grossed millions at the box office because it dared to challenge, in an honest and relatively nonjudgmental way, our personal roles in all of the injustice that remains in our world. Yes, even into Afghanistan in 2014 and the Ukraine and Venezuela in the same March days that I watched this prophetic and compelling movie. That is to say, the movie is compelling to those who dare to follow the dialogue and the deeper, insidious messages that became too radically exposed by 2014. Oh, Tom Cruise may not have given the performance of his life, thereby detracting from Meryl Streep and Robert Redford's and others performances in this movie. But, he should be applauded for daring to undertake this movie and for Redford daring to produce a movie that will never gross the millions of other blockbusters that elevate blood and gore to the epitome of entertainment, no matter what is happening in the real world around us. Yes, I will be recommending this movie in footnotes to my book in progress because I dare to write that it is our individual incompetence to our individual duty as responsible citizens that really leads to the decline of the potential of democracy. Instead of applying the messages in this movie, we continue to make 'democracy' a modern farce. This movie simply becomes record that this was a debate raised in America nearly a decade ago. If that is not a measure of the movie's relevance today, I do not know what is. Don MacAlpine, Saskatchewan, Canada