The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

"Lions for Lambs" Not "Too Paws Off"

Today's Washington Post review of the new Robert Redford movie Lions for Lambs calls it "strangely inert'' and says its take of the war on terror "plays too often like a college colloquium, with one extended scene of a classroom debate suffering from all the sleep-inducing effects of the real thing.'' Not only that, it accuses the film of "ambiguity.'' Ouch. But is it really such a bad thing to walk out of a political movie without a headache from repeated blows to the brain? I saw a screening last night with my movie-crazy 11-year-old son—who, needless to say, does not go for "inert''—and his only criticism was that they should have shot it on film. "A great movie,'' he thought. And for better or worse, not exactly My Dinner With Andre.

My only quibble was with the particulars of the spanking the movie gives the Judy Miller stand-in, played by Meryl Streep, for the media's role in selling the war in Iraq. OK, whuppin' deserved, but not in the way it's set up. Streep's veteran reporter is torn over whether to make what she sees as the clear moral choice—refusing to broadcast an exclusive about a new American military initiative in Afghanistan altogether, or maybe breaking the story with the crawl line, "In another breathtakingly bad idea from our government today ... '' Or, she could do the wrong thing by just reporting the story. No ambiguity there, but also no relation to the many ethical choices reporters actually face. Still, this is no polemic; it's a love note to our troops, a movie with lots of heart but no pat answers, and one that might even jump-start some of those uncomfortable political discussions we tend to shy away from.