One Utah

In World War I, a German general expressed his admiration for the courage of British foot soldiers, fighting courageously under the command of inept leaders: “Nowhere have I seen such lions led by such lambs.” That’s the intended message of Lions for Lambs, directed by Robert Redford and starring Redford, Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep. Cruise is also the executive producer.

Screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan pulled his political punches with The Kingdom. According to some, he does it in this movie too– not daring to really take a side or delve far enough past the rhetoric to examine the real motivations of Washington decision-makers.

The film is a lot like a stage play. Presidential-aspirant neo-con Senator Jasper Irving (Cruise) has the job of selling the Bush administration’s disingenuous, clueless line: “Do you want to win the war on terror? Yes or no?” Janine Roth (Streep) is a veteran television reporter who is trying to decide whether to tell everyone how bogus Irving’s new Afghanistan “victory” strategy really is. Dr. Stephen Malley (Redford) is a California political science professor having an hour-long conference with a student he feels is blowing his brilliant future by not coming to class.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, two of Malley’s former students, Arian Finch (Derek Luke) and Ernest Rodriguez (Michael Pena), are part of a U.S. Army Special Forces team trying to capture a snowy mountaintop. These scenes are supposed to show the fatal disconnect between policy made by politicians (most of whom never served in uniform) and the real world. How to conduct military operations without knowing who or where the enemy may be? What are the consequences of not having enough troops?

In an America where support for the Bush administration’s foreign policy has already sunk about as low as it can go, reviewers point out that nothing new is revealed by this talky picture. For example:

Despite its powerhouse cast, “Lions for Lambs” feels like a disjointed series of lectures, rather than a sharp narrative, and ends up falling flat.

There is no faulting “Lions for Lambs” for its good intentions, but its arguments have the exhausted quality of a political talk show transcript or campaign stump speech.

I’ll update tonight or tomorrow after I’ve seen “Lions for Lambs.” I’m prepared to be disappointed. For one thing, I doubt if the Afghanistan plot line will be nearly as epic as the real story of the March 2002 operation in the Shahikot Mountains that it’s apparently based upon. I strongly recommend Sean Naylor’s book, Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda, which is out in paperback now. Where’s that movie?

UPDATE: “Lions for Lambs” made me appreciate the documentary No End in Sight even more. You can’t effectively critique our boneheaded policy in Afghanistan and Iraq through a few fictional characters spouting generalities, when we really need to hear specifics from many real insiders and journalists like those interviewed in the documentary. In contrast to “The Kingdom,” here the enemy appears only as faceless figures in the dark. The script does get in some easy, well-deserved potshots at the moral failure of the TV news channels, but it’s as if Matthew Michael Carnahan has never watched “The Daily Show.” The Redford and Streep characters reminisce about Vietnam, and the Cruise character uses the old phrase “winning hearts and minds,” without ever acknowledging very different misconceptions underlying the so-called Global War on Terror. What’s going on now is worse than Vietnam, not in the number of casualties but because of how it’s wrecked our foreign policy and how it’s destroying our own Constitution and the worldwide respect America once enjoyed.

UPDATE: It’s only November, and 2007 is already the deadliest year of the Iraq fiasco for Americans. The morning after seeing this movie, I learned that this year in Afghanistan has also been the deadliest. There was an ambush yesterday in Nuristan province, which has been the scene of heavy fighting in recent months. Six U.S. soldiers and three Afghans died, and eight Americans and 11 Afghans were wounded.

This entry was posted Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 9:18 am and is filed under 4th Estate (Media), Military, National Politics, This Blog, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.