DVD Picks & Pans: Hot Air and Blind Ambition

Military.com - Tom Miller

This week's DVD releases include another pretentious anti-war film from a veteran Hollywood liberal and a powerful morality play about the wages of sin: in this case, unbridled greed and blind ambition. 

"Lions for Lambs," DVD-2008 ($29.99, United Artists)

I knew that Hollywood's left-liberals—and their chattering allies in the media and academia—were pretentious and whiny, but who knew they could be so breathtakingly boring? 

After the first four hours (okay, so it only felt like four hours) of this interminable liberal gabfest, it occurred to me that veteran Tinseltown liberal Robert Redford, who directs  with a wooden hand and a tin ear, is too smart for this.  He must know that the story is banal, the dialogue is preachy, and the tone is whiny.  Or, maybe not.

The plot, such as it is, has three tenuously-connected threads that play out at the same time.  In Washington, D.C., ambitious young Republican Senator Jasper Irving (Tom Cruise) invites veteran reporter Janine Roth (Meryl Streep) to his office for an exclusive interview about his latest idea on how to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

While they spar, the initial military operation based on Irving's plan unfolds in the isolated mountains of Afghanistan where a special operations platoon is preparing to establish a forward operating point.  The platoon includes Ernest Rodriguez (Michael Pena) and Arian Finch (Derek Luke), two young soldiers who studied political science at an elite California college under Prof. Stephen Malley (Redford directing himself). 

Out in California, thread number three unravels—nothing here unfolds—as Prof. Malley meets with Todd Hayes (Andrew Garfield), a bright but cynical student.  While Malley disapproves of Rodriguez and Finch's decision to join the Army, he derides Hayes for being a slacker.  "Rome is burning," he implores Hayes, while you are fiddling around.  Yeah, he really says that.  And, a bunch of stuff that's equally silly.  (Screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan's mother must be proud.)

Senator Irving is a liberal strawman: a slick, callous neo-con itching for a fight.  Reporter Roth is a thoughtful, caring liberal who sees useless sacrifice where Irving sees danger.  Her reference point is not 9/11, but Vietnam. 

Prof. Malley's America is a decaying, deceitful, and shameful place.  When he says "Rome is burning," he's serious.  He says this, of course, while lounging in a sunny office at a tony university drinking a Starbucks latte.  And, without a hint of irony.

The only redeeming characters in all of this are Rodriguez and Finch, who follow their conscience into the Army.  They come to a bad end, of course, but director Redford at least allows them to die honorably. 

"Lions for Lambs" is long on talk and short on action.  It makes liberals look worse than pretentious.  It makes them look b-o-r-i-n-g. 

Military.com Rating: *

(DVD extras include trailers, audio commentary with Redford, and a featurette on the "Making of Lions for Lambs.")
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"There Will Be Blood (2-Disc Collector's Edition)", DVD-2008 ($34.99, Paramount Home Entertainment) Also available in a single-disc edition.

Capitalism doesn't get much more rugged than this.  Set during the California oil boom of the early twentieth-century, director Paul Thomas Anderson's epic is based on socialist writer Upton Sinclair's novel Oil!  Adapted for the screen by Anderson, it's a cautionary tale of ambition, greed, and faith writ large.

Oil man Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is driven to succeed by dark, inner forces and allows little to get in his way.  A fortuitous tip leads him to his big discovery—an underground sea of oil in the hard-scrabble California outback.  Moving quickly to buy up land and win over the locals, Plainview clashes with an evangelical preacher, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), who's keen to squeeze money out of Plainview for his own grand schemes.  Their battle of wills (and egos) provides the film's primary dynamic and most intense moments. 

A subplot examining Plainview's complicated relationship with his son H.W. (Dillon Freasier)—perhaps the only person the tragically flawed Plainview ever loved—is less revealing than one might hope.   

The movie looks great—it won an Oscar for cinematography—and the acting is often inspired.  Day-Lewis won the film's other Academy Award for Best Actor.  Dano, however, is over-the-top on occasion.  More significantly, the film is too long at 2 hours, 40 minutes.  Director Anderson allows too many scenes to run on long after he's made his point.  More judicious editing could lope perhaps as much as thirty minutes off without detracting from the film's powerful impact. 

Military.com Rating: *** ½

(DVD extras include trailers, extended scenes, "Dailies Gone Wild," and "The Story of Petroleum," a silent film on the oil business in the 1920s.)
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Military.com Picks & Pans Rating Scale

* Pan—Save your money & time
** Borderline Pick—Okay but only as a last resort
*** Pick—Worthwhile & enjoyable
****Enthusiastic Pick—Excellent

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Copyright 2012 by Tom Miller