Cast: Robert Redford, Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep

Director: Robert Redford

The Kingdom

Cast: Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper, Jason Bateman

Director: Peter Berg

What are the chances of two films dealing with America's West Asia policy, with the same screenwriter and with the director of one of them acting in the other, releasing the same week? Practically nil.

But that said, Lions for Lambs and The Kingdom, both written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, couldn’t be more different. If the first is about winning minds as war on terror becomes a losing battle, the second is about taking action as only America knows it. And both leave you thinking much after the credit rolls are over.

Carnahan gave up his profession and started writing after the cataclysmic events of 9/11, when he felt the need to do something about what had happened. And remarkably for him, his scripts have found their way to these two much-talked-about films in this short span.

How he feels about 9/11 comes across in one of the scenes of Lions for Lambs, when Senator Irving (played by Cruise) tells journalist Janine Roth (Streep): “Do you remember the fear we felt after that day (9/11), about where the next attack would come from? About roads, bridges, schools, nuclear plants? How the colour of the sky looked tinged with terror?”

Carnahan argues for both sides of the debate in the film — the naysayers who ridicule America's folly and hubris as well as pointing out that someone has to do the heavy lifting. He notes that the US definitely does not have all the answers but underlines that not many of us are even considering the questions.

While the Senator and the journalist represent the establishment and a media that loves what a war does to its ratings, the other end of the debate is held up by a political science teacher, Professor Malley (Redford), trying to convince a student that not all fights are worthless. There is a direct connection in this to the war, for two of Malley's brightest students enlisted for the army — convinced to some extent by his words — believing this was one fight worth the cause.

What Malley and the student don't know is that while they talk, those two students — a Black and a Mexican — are being sent into Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan as part of a “new plan”. Not surprisingly, it's hardly new or much of a plan.

If the territory of Lions for Lambs is the corridors of Washington DC and the tricky heights of Afghanistan, The Kingdom deals with that steadfast ally of America that is bin Laden's true spiritual home but which hardly figures in the war on terror: Saudi Arabia.

After a grisly bombing kills tens of American workers in a secure compound inside Riyadh, including more importantly some FBI men, the US hands-off policy towards the Saudis, in deference to their oil wealth, is called into question.

As Washington indicates that it would rather not do anything to upset its only remaining ally in West Asia, FBI agent Fleury (Foxx) decides to take matters into his own hands. Using some personal blackmail with the Saudi Ambassador, he gets five days for his team of four to get inside Riyadh, investigate the crime and catch the culprits. You can understand how the rest of the script follows.

Berg, who has a small role in Lions for Lambs, is very good with the action sequences in The Kingdom, keeping up the suspense, and conveying the horror of homegrown terror. He also gives a fair idea of a country balancing a façade of wealth with simmering tensions beneath. But, have few doubts, this is a country viewed through the eyes of an outsider, tinged with 9/11.

There is a mocking tone to the whole documentary feel that Berg gives to the film, only partly balanced by the fact that the Saudi head of police plays as crucial a role in solving the bombing as do the Americans. But the mere suggestion that four Americans can do what a country's entire investigative team can't is preposterous.

At the same time, as others have argued, this could be the crux of Carnahan's script. His suggestion of how America does things: fly in, kill some, ship out. The FBI team includes a woman (Garner) and a man who has a Jewish grandmother, who reads Koran for dummies as night-time reading. Even a teen political student can tell you that is not the best of compositions in a country where contact with a woman who is not your wife or sister is not allowed and which is highly sceptical of America.

However, in ending the film on a more positive note from what is said to have been the original script, Berg does a cop-out. While succumbing to box-office pressures, he has also managed to stir up a fair bit of controversy, with the film being banned by several countries in West Asia, though not Saudi Arabia itself.

Still, Berg gets some excellent performances from the actors playing the Saudi characters, especially Israeli (!!)Ashraf Bahrom, who plays the chief of police.

In Lions for Lambs, it is Tom Cruise as the slick, upwardly mobile Republican who really impresses. Confident and charming as his conversation with journalist Roth begins, he becomes over the hour desperate and arrogant. Don't you see, can't you see, he says, that his is the right way.

Over that hour, the older Roth and Malley fall silent, almost defeated by the forces at work against them.

As Senator Irving says, “We are willing to do whatever it takes, whatever it takes, to win this war. You do want us to win the war on terror, don't you?” Don't you?