Clevercell Very disappointing...

ThiefHott Too much of everything

Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

lin_brian Boring as hell lost interest after the first 30 minutes.

juneebuggy This was slow, (slow) burning character study with tons of thought provoking dialogue from an A-list cast. So based on the attached cast and an intriguing story I went in expecting a pretty great movie however this ended up being a struggle to get through. Sure the acting is fantastic, how could it not be with Robert Redford, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise but the movie just sort of waffles through the great story premise with tons of talky-talk and ultimately goes nowhere.It follows two determined students at a West Coast University, Arian and Ernest who take inspiration from their professor and decide to do something important with their lives. The two make the rash decision to join the battle in Afghanistan and this sets off a sequence of events involving a congressman, a journalist and the professor.Unfortunately even the action filled Army rangers/college students story arc got pretty cheesy. And then to top it all off, after sitting through 90 minutes of debate, the movie just ends! What, that's it? where's the resolution? What answer does disillusioned college boy give Dr. Mallory?Frustrating both in execution and storyline because I wanted to like this and these events are really happening. 04.13

jimstaudt-142-658515 When this movie came out, it was panned by the right as being "too anti-Bush" and anti-war. Well, what could we expect from Hollywood other than that? Now, 7 years later, the story line seems eerily prophetic. Senator Irving (Cruise), responding to the journalist's (Streep) question "Why not just pull out?", says (paraphrasing here), "One, Iraq goes back to being a third world country in ruins, two, Iran will have nuclear capability, and three, Afghanistan will continue to be the crap-hole it is, with a strengthened Taliban as a result." Funny, this is exactly what Barack Obama has accomplished. His pulling out of Iraq has destroyed what was a budding democracy, his weakness in dealing with Iran has them on the verge of having a bomb, and his pending promised pull-out from Afghanistan will have made 10 years of war there all for nothing, at the cost of an indeterminable amount of "blood and treasure". And hundreds of young men and women walking around on aluminum "legs", trying to make do with plastic arms, or dead.... or worse. And yes, Virginia, the Taliban (and al-qaeda) are indeed strengthened, despite the Obama claim that they were "decimated". All told, a good movie. Great performances by Cruise (very believable as the either idealistic or phony (depending on your political point of view) "rising star" senator, Redford as your typical overpaid anti-war ideologue, and Streep as the reporter who thinks it's more important to report the news as she sees it as opposed to simply reporting the news. A great "message" movie, whether you take it from the point of view of the right or the left.

sol ****SPOILERS**** We get three different views in the film about the goings on in the US and abroad in the war in Afghanistan as well to a lesser extent Iraq from three different points of view. The first has to do with US Senator Jasper Irving, Tom Cruise, being interviewed by ANX news reporter Jannine Roth, Meryl Streep, about his new and revolutionary efforts in winning the war as well as hearts and minds of the Afghan people. Sen. Irving is full of optimism in how the war in Afghanistan is now going with a major US military offensive in the offering, when the snow covering the Afghan mountains melts, in the spring. While bragging to Mrs.Roth about how great things are going to be a US Army helicopter is shot down over Afghanistan with two of the US military personal on it Earnset Rodriguez, Michael Pena,& Arian Finch, Derek Luke, jumping out and surviving in the snow below.We then have UCLA history professor Stephen Malley, Robert Redford, having a jam or BS session with one of his most brilliant student Todd Hayes, Andrew Garfield, who despite skipping classes gets nothing but straight A's. Malley wants Todd to take things seriously or else he'll end up disillusioned with life and may well turn to drugs and alcohol to makes things more interesting for himself. As for Finch & Rodriguez, whom we find out were once students of Prof.Malley their holding on to dear life in the snow as a battle hardened Taliban unit is slowly closing in on them for the kill.We then shoot back to Mrs. Roth interviewing Sen. Jasper who's a little bit unnerved in his optimistic views in forecasting the war's rosy future that both Rodriguez & Finch are involved in her knowing that she's heard the same line of BS some 40 years ago, in 1967, as a collage reporter about the war in Vietnam which turned out to be a total disaster for the US. It's not that long that we go back to Prof.Malley telling the not to attentive,he seemed to have better things on his mind, Todd Hayes about his life as a US Army servicemen in Vietnam and a protested during the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention where he ended up getting his skull fractured by a policemen's baton! As all this chit chat and mindless talk is going on back in the real world, the war in Afghanistan, all efforts to save both Riodriguez & Finch by their fellow US Special Forces personnel falls short with them, blazing away at their attackers, going down in a blaze of glory as the Taliban catches up with them and blasts the two brave American fighting men to kingdom come!With Mrs. Roth now back at her ANX newspaper office she's told by her boss, Kiven Dunn, to go with the totally BS story that Sen. Jasper gave her about how great the war in Afghanisatn is going to be after the winter snow melt. Knowing better but, with a sick mother that she's taking care of, needing the job to pay her expensive she goes with it in promoting the endless war that she knows is a lost cause just like Sen. Jasper's future political aspirations.P.S Very accurate film about how hopeless the both wars in Iraq & Afghanistan really are. In fact the war in Iraq ended a few years later after the movie was released with the US installed,if you can call it that, Iraqi Government far worse for the Iraqi people then the one it replaced which was that of Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein! As for the War in Asfghastain it's still going on with record US losses and no end, unless the US & it's NATO allies withdrew, in sight! That even after reportedly, if we believe what were told by the US Government & media, having the head of the Al Qeada Terrorist Organization, who was the very reason why the US went to war against Afghanistan in the first place, Osama Bin-Leden gunned down in his hideout by a squad of Navy Seals in May 2011.