I’m conflicted. I want Hollywood to be producing political films which challenge the actions of our Governments and make us think about society and how we want our world to be, but its’ recent efforts make me want to beg them to stop.

Rendition was bad enough with it’s weak storyline and overly simplistic view… but I’ll take a weak storyline over no storyline any day. Lions for Lambs hasn’t a hint of a storyline to be found anywhere.

In the place of a storyline we get a smug and sanctimonious lecture – not only is there no storyline, there isn’t even any credible dialogue. Streep, Cruise and Redford take it in turns to deliver patronising monologues, with supporting cast around them to prompt them onto their next sermon.

Redford is excruciatingly smug as the college lecturer who wants to save the world one student at a time, and he delivers his twee monologue in an unbearably superior manner.

Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep trot out cliched performances, leaning heavily on their past performances and never once leaving their own particular comfort zones. Michael Peña, Derek Luke and Andrew Garfield aren’t much better, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and blame the director.

All these actors obviously need a strong director to keep them on track in order to deliver watchable performances, and Redford is not up to it.

The ‘plot’ revolves around a new initiative in the War On Terror, which was actually a quite unnessecary device to deliver this lecture and one can only guess that it was hoped that including scenes involving military action would get a few bums on seats so that Redford could deliver this admonishing lecture to the general public.

Rather than go to see this film you should simply watch the trailer, there is absolutely nothing else to be gained from watching the film in it’s entirety.