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Lions For Lambs directed by Robert Redford, starring Robert Redford, Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, Michael Peña, Andrew Garfield, Peter Berg, Derek Luke. Rating M – Violence & Offensive Language

Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, who also wrote The Kingdom, Lions for Lambs is essentially a wartime drama, that looks at how different parts of American society react to war. It asks “are you doing your part?” — whether you see your part as joining the military, protesting or effecting change in some way. It’s about your potential in this world and whether you use it.

Robert Redford directs, and plays Californian Professor Stephen Malley, who acts as narrator and chief question-wrangler. Malley has called in a promising student, Tom Hayes (Andrew Garfield) to give him a shove in the right direction. He tells him about two other students, Rodriguez and Finch (Michael Peña, Derek Luke), who came from a much harder background and decided the only way they could make a difference politically in their lives involves getting some prior U.S. soldiering experience behind them.

We follow those students as they embark on a disastrous campign on the Iran-Afghanistan border, and aided by Professor Malley’s narrative, flash back to their presentations at university and the moment they announced their enlistment.

Meantime, Senator Irving (Tom Cruise) is divulging details of the new military strategy to Janine Roth (Meryl Streep), a reporter with 40 years experience, who sees it as a similar mistake as strategies undertaken in the Vietnam War. She sees his story as convincing propaganda, wants to tell it the way she sees it, and knows her hands are tied.

It’s damning of the Bush administration and of ambitious politicians in general. But Lions for Lambs doesn’t stop there. It quite happily takes a shot at U.S. news media, insisting that they were also baying for blood after 9/11 and were therefore complicit in the “War on Terror”. It asks a lot of questions about where to next, although by design it doesn’t try to answer those questions. That’s for the viewer to take home and chew over.

Lions For Lambs is entertaining, mostly well written (apart from a couple of clunky lines) and exceptionally performed. But above all, it’s thought provoking, with the feel of a good political discussion.