Review of Lions for Lambs (2007) by Grant S — 30 Dec 2013

Lions for Lambs doesn't feel like a movie. It's more like a series of lectures assorted into feature length running time like one long university lecture or the interview for a job.

Lions for Lambs has an interesting script and a decent premise, but all talk and no play makes Jack a dull boy. The whole film is just an insane amount of dialogue, watching characters study and the discuss their studies amongst other things, but what there is to learn from all this is what you could have learned from an actual university lecture or from a documentary on the war on terror.

See, Lions for Lambs has the knowledge and has the dialogue, but it has no stimulation, and it barely has characters either since the importance is more in what they're saying than who they are. And despite the efforts of talented actors Robert Redford, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise who do all manage to give strong and believable performances, writer Matthew Michael Carnahan gives them positions in the film and in the film's universe, but no characters. With the sleight of hand direction that Robert Redford delivers, Lions for Lambs does manage to preserve the illusion that it may go somewhere constantly, but by the end of it there is a gaping emptiness left in the viewer which has disbelief that they have actually just watched a film. What is interesting at the start proceeds to merely circulate for the rest of the film and whatever interest that was present at the beginning has waned by this point.

While Lions for Lambs may ask many questions that a viewer may answer themselves, without answering them all you have left is a film built on questions, and so what the actual message is will either come to the viewer as predictable, unanswered or both. Yet the film isn't supposed to decide, it leaves you to do that. Since the entertainment value isn't so great, it isn't likely that viewers will have cared enough to do it themselves.

Perhaps if the story was tied together it could have been better, and perhaps if it wasn't just one long exam lecture it also could have been better. But failing to succeed as either, all that is left in Lions for Lanbs is a film with good performances but too much talking and little entertainment value. It's not one of director Robert Redford's better efforts.