Lions, Lambs and More Lambs

It seems, in retrospect, we were lambs to the slaughter: all of us who gathered in the theater I was in last night to watch Lions for Lambs by Robert Redford. It’s been over 10 years since I had a violent urge to walk out of a movie, but this one gave me that urge. I always try my best to give a film another few minutes to redeem itself, just another few. It’ll pull it out somehow. And having gone with a couple of other people, there was extra inertia not to bail. I wish I had, I wasted 90 minutes of my life. The only moment reaching 3 on a scale of 1 to 10 was a part of the scene in which Meryl Streep talks to her boss.

However, about 15 minutes in, it was clear there was nothing going to save this one. Confused, preachy and smarmy. And trying so hard to be relevant and clever and smart and failing, failing, failing. The government lied. The media fell down on its job. We can’t trust the government on any new “strategy”. We can’t trust the media since it keeps bringing us Britney news. We get all this. And we get that the rest of us are complacent, unconcerned with doing something about it all. But, OMG, is this the best Hollywood can do? Intellectual doggerel.

I understand that Americans are dumber and shallower than I could ever imagine. Perhaps doggerel is the only thing that Americans understand (they did re-elect Bush and Cheney after all), but this can’t be expected to convince Americans to get involved.

We are doomed.