Eye Candy #278 - "Lions for Lambs"

Lions for Lambs: Upon viewing this movie, it's easy to see why it didn't do well at the box office. In lieu of lambasting a particular political point of view, it goes after most of them. Clocking in at a surprisingly full 83 minutes (don't know where the 100 minutes on the film description came from, but it ain't), the film weaves several contrasting stories together roughly simultaneously, involving two special forces soldiers wounded in the wild of Afghanistan, a hot-shot Republican senator talking to a reporter about the "new plan", and a professor advising one of his students. Directed (and starring as the professor) Robert Redford, we've got Tom Cruise playing a comically over-the-top conservative heavy (his dialogue is so bizarre, he comes across as inhuman) and Meryl Streep (playing the polar opposite of her character in "Rendition", I suppose to restore the karmic balance in the universe), this drama's message (it's not a thriller, though it tries to be "thrilling") is that the American public in general has strayed from doing what is "right" to doing what we want and determining or dismissing its validity after the fact. We sacrifice our scruples when it's convenient and the rest of the world pays the price. It's an extremely narrow world view that ignores a LOT of other factors (what's wrong with the world cannot easily be summed up with a pretty bow on top in 83 minutes, I don't care who is telling it). It's not casual movie viewing (as in Friday night in the theater), and whoever the executive is that thought it would be with Tom Cruise in the lead isn't in touch with reality. The main problem with the film is it essentially blames audience members watching the film for their mistakes and complicity in the state of the world, and then never stops reminding them it's their fault. Nobody goes to the movies to feel bad about themselves. Slick but pretentious. Woodchuck sez, "Left me with a feeling of 'meh'."