Film

Redford’s impressively self-satisfied political salvo approximates the experience of watching freshman public-policy majors debate each other to a draw. It consists simply of two shrill, lengthy conversations about the reaction to our current wars, punctuated by battle footage to counter the impression of staginess. That wouldn’t be so bad if either talk qualified as news, but the rhetoric is warmed-over. Anyone who’s read any newspaper since 2003 will quickly feel trapped in a sardine can.

In Dialogue No. 1, veteran journalist Janine Roth (Streep) interviews Sen. Jasper Irving (Cruise), an ostensibly up-and-coming Republican who somehow won Illinois with 77 percent of the vote. Under the guise of giving her an exclusive, he informs her that the U.S. has commenced a new combat operation in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, at “a California university,” a graying professor (Redford) harangues a disillusioned pupil (Garfield) about the virtues of taking action. Lecturing us as much as him, Redford lionizes two students (Luke and Peña) who used tortuous logic to justify enlisting. It doesn’t matter what they did, you see; he just likes that they did something.

Janine regrets having acted as a mouthpiece for the Bush administration and considers withholding the story. (Note to Janine: If the government is already bombing, it’s already news; get a dissenting opinion and move on.) Irving, meanwhile, browbeats her into submission. Dismissing Abu Ghraib as nothing more than “bad PR,” Cruise all but foams at the mouth. When his own company, United Artists, positioned Lions as an awards contender, surely it had him in mind for a Razzie.