Lions for Lambs: movie review

By Alex Ackel, staff writer
Friday, December 7, 2007

In today’s world it is hard to know what information is real and what is fabricated by the media and the press.  During the Spanish-American War, the publishers such as Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hurst both promoted a war with their newspapers in order to sell more copies.  They realized that wars create a great deal of news, therefore providing them with plenty of material and encouraging the public to buy their papers.  

The Movie Lions for Lambs draws a strong parallel to the yellow journalism during the Spanish-American War and modern journalism.  Today’s press has been blamed for buying into the war in the Middle East and promoting it when there were several signs that the war should not have been fought. 
The movie depicts a struggle with three intertwining stories. Each story serves to show the corruption of our government and its flaws. 

The first story is a one about a young student majoring political science who is struggling to realize who he is becoming in the world.  As the plot thickens, the viewer learns of two former political science students who are now soldiers in the war being fought in Afghanistan.  The antagonist of the movie is a Republican Senator played by Tom Cruise.  He represents the lies that the current government has told to the American people and the bad that has spurred from it. Meryl Streep and Robert Redford are two main characters of the cast who stand out in the movie. They stand and defend the truth, in contrast to Tom Cruise’s character.  

Although this movie may seem boring to some people, this movie offers an insight to modern day politics and it is a compelling story about discovering the truth in a society where it does not seem to exist. Someone who enjoys the complexities of politics instead of a light and carefree movie would most definitely enjoy this movie.