Before you go any further let me tell you that I'm not American, so I'm not writing this to support any particular view or political party. I'm Polish, studying in US I appreciate good cinema and by this I mean intelligent movies that do more than just trick you/cheat you into having a particular crafted/staged emotion. My comment was reported as abuse for reasons I don't understand. I have seen this movie, I didn't like it and I didn't write this as a political rant. Quite honestly, as culture gets more and more "dumbed down" and bubble gum like so do the so-called thought provoking movies. Compare this with any of the communism-period Wajda work, and you will see real multilayer movie-making . This week I was able to get into the sneak preview of Tom Cruise's latest movie "Lions for lambs". Now, I can enjoy a good anti-war movie even if I don't agree with its' message. But this wasn't "Platoon" or the "Deer hunter", It didn't even have one tenth of the complexity of "Munich". This movie felt like pure propaganda, not provoking you to think but telling the viewer what to think. It didn't really bother with much of a plot and in my opinion was really insulting viewer's intelligence with how much it felt to spell out "war is bad" and "Republicans lie". Running approx. 1:20 minutes it even conformed to the format of shock value propaganda movie. If anything it felt like those Donald Duck anti-Nazi cartoons Disney put out in the 1940's. It's not that I think a movie can't criticize this government I support the war in Iraq but I see and understand that someone might have a different view. This movie's only point is that no rationally thinking person would ever support the war in Iraq or Afghanistan and people do so only because they're duped by silver tongued Republicans. Tom Cruise plays the GOP spin doctor, trying to sell the new Afghan strategy to a CNN caliber reporter, Meryl Streep. This is the movie's weakest point. The characters mostly talk- we have a reporter and a republican, engaged professor and a lazy student trying to get him to care about things surrounding him, and we have a story about young, promising students who decide to enroll, go to war and die. People with opposing views talk about patriotism and conservative characters are either exposed as liars or naive and dismissed. There is nothing wrong with talking but this picture I found to be very preachy. This movie can't seem to comprehend that there is no right and wrong in politics. We already know what people's opinions are anyway so there's nothing new to discover. The movie's only point is that: Republicans lie and they know they are lying, the Democrtats are on the side and good and light but are too lazy and preoccupied with making news about over the top celebrities(as movie hints with ending with shots of the entertainment headlines on a news network and a question: what will you do? to call opponents' bluff and talk about how we're losing in Iraq. The producers believe that no reasonable person can think otherwise.
There is not a single notion that this may come from fundamentally different views on the world and that people may have conflicting opinions and that's not unpatriotic or unjustified.The film claims to offer a fair view. It brings up some facts and views but quickly dismisses them if it doesn't fit the major premise. Republicans bad, Democrats good. The movie also tries to manipulate by showing Streep driving down DC and seeing graves and the Memorial Monument from the car at the end. There is something really odd about her performance and very theatrical face expressions that felt like she's saying "I'm Meryl Streep and I'm acting", while the jelly Tom Cruise character looked as if he was about to jump on his sofa prosing his love for Katie Holmes. This is a very political movie, but not in a way that's smart and witty. It's blunt and emotionally void,but
There is not a single notion that this may come from fundamentally different views on the world and that people may have conflicting opinions and that's not unpatriotic or unjustified.The film claims to offer a fair view. It brings up some facts and views but quickly dismisses them if it doesn't fit the major premise. Republicans bad, Democrats good. The movie also tries to manipulate by showing Streep driving down DC and seeing graves and the Memorial Monument from the car at the end. There is something really odd about her performance and very theatrical face expressions that felt like she's saying "I'm Meryl Streep and I'm acting", while the jelly Tom Cruise character looked as if he was about to jump on his sofa prosing his love for Katie Holmes. This is a very political movie, but not in a way that's smart and witty. It's blunt and emotionally void,but