Lions For Lambs

We live in interesting times. It was not until many years after the Vietnam War ended that popular films started to address the issues the war raised. When Three Kings was released in 1999 it seemed like an amazingly timely film even though Gulf War One had ended in 1991. Flash forward to the War On Terror (WOT). Now the production cycle has been sped up so much (or maybe the war has gone on way too long) we get to watch fictionalized films that ponder the war while soldiers are still in the field. Lions For Lambs follows it brethren (Syriana, The Kingdom, In the Valley of Elah, Grace Is Gone, Rendition, soon to be released Redacted). Note: though Syriana is not directly about the WOT it is about the real motivation for the war aka OIL. Lions For Lambs is a three-in-one political drama that made me think it might have been more effective as a stage play. We are told the stories of two idealistic soldiers in the field, their former professor who is trying to motivate a student who is content to coast through life and a Senator who is trying to re-recruit a journalist back into the patriotic job of writing propaganda in the place of news in order to start WOT Two against Iran. It's all quite ambitious and though it hits the mark here and there the message is diluted by trying to use such a wide canvas. The film was written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, who also wrote The Kingdom, and directed by Robert Redford who also stars.
Memorable moment: Lt. Finch jumps from the helicopter to help his best friend.