Redford, directing from a screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan (of the far livelier, if ludicrous, Middle East adventure The Kingdom), wastes the talents of the great cinematographer Philippe Rousselot. There's not much even a master shooter can do when you've essentially got two actors locked in a room. That's where Redford and Garfield find themselves, ringed by books about Vietnam and other history lessons gone unlearned.
And, three time-zones to the east, Tom Cruise (as Sen. Jasper Irving) and Meryl Streep (as veteran TV journo Janine Roth) are trapped together in an oak-paneled office furnished with an American flag, a fancy rug, and framed photos of big shots. Irving, an ambitious young GOP pol, a Harvard-schooled, West Point-trained conservative, has invited the reporter to his chambers for an "exclusive": He's telling her, and her alone, about a "new strategy" to win the war against evildoers. Apparently, it is 2009, and the U.S. is still bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. (No mention of who's residing in the White House, alas.)
The third strand of Lions for Lambs' interwoven screenplay: Army Rangers Arian Finch (Derek Luke) and Ernest Rodriguez (Michael Pena), fallen from a helicopter and trapped on the snowbound ridges of a mountain range in northern Afghanistan. They're lying there, broken and bloodied, as the Taliban closes in.
With awkward cutaway shots to ticking clocks, to Streep's pen as she scratches shorthand in her reporter's notebook, and with the connective backstory of soldiers Arian and Ernest coming to light, Lions for Lambs lumbers to its end.
