As political polemic and as entertainment, Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs is mostly unsuccessful, but as a statement of purpose on behalf of its co-star and executive producer, Tom Cruise, it’s mildly fascinating. Through sheer force of star power, Cruise manages to temporarily hijack this lumpy lecture, and turn it into a battle cry against the corporate media that both built and destroyed him.

You probably don’t need to be reminded that Cruise has had a rough couple of years, culminating in the announcement in November 2006 that he and long-time producing partner Paula Wagner had signed a deal to resurrect MGM’s dormant United Artists. Some saw this as a savvy move for both Cruise and MGM: disappointing box office on Mission Impossible: 3 aside, there’s still no one on the planet with Cruise’s international name-and-face recognition, and as he proved with War of the Worlds, which made $65 million in its first weekend just a scant month after the couch jumping incident, the guy can open the right project regardless of what’s going on in his personal life. But skeptics (myself included) wondered if MGM was just throwing Cruise a bone—if they weren’t doing anything with UA anyway, was handing the brand over really a sure sign of confidence?

The guy had—has–something to prove. With his career at the crossroads, the choice of Lions For Lambs as the vehicle to drive him over the hump is not an immediately logical one. It’s worth noting that Cruise didn’t go looking for politically relevant story to tell—Redford signed on to direct the script, and then called Cruise, looking to cast him. And I may get permanently disinvited from Sundance for saying this, but I’m not sure if Redford fully knew what he was getting into.

I’ve enjoyed the watching the press blitz for Lambs, because it has so transparently revealed Cruise and Redford as opportunists from opposite ends, joining forces but not necessarily meeting even half way. We go into further detail about this in this week’s podcast, but it’s impossible to ignore the fact that, in a previous life, Cruise was the ultimate icon of Reagan America, and in his current life, his political passions seem to be limited to causes that dovetail with the aims of Scientology. Whilst supporting the film, he’s made his apathy/ignorance concerning the film’s political milieu flagrantly apparent, leaving the speechifying to Redford.

What Tom Cruise is concerned with, now and forever, is his own stardom, and the space that stardom takes up in popular media. The most that can be said for Lions is that it puts Cruise’s key preoccupation–as well as the elemental totems of his star power, the visual and behavioral signifiers that us children of the 80s recognize on an almost pre-conscious level—to astoundingly good use. He plays Jasper Irving, a camera-ready senator who carries his steely resolve behind blinding-white teeth and an impeccably tailored suit—he’s Mitt Romney with balls. He invites an aging cable news journalist (Meryl Streep, whose inherent class is played up to set her character apart from the headline bunnies with whom she competes for airtime) to his office, a cavernous study decked out with portraits of Cruise’s arm digitally composited around Condi Rice.

Jasper may be the villain in Redford’s purview, but he’s proven to be extremely savvy about his role as a media figure, more so than Streep who, even at her advanced career state, seems to still be holding on to one or two pie-eyed fantasies about Changing the System through reporting the news. The senator has called the reporter to his chambers to force-feed a story about a new bait-and-switch policy that he’s crafted to accelerate “victory” (Redford implies scare quotes in his direction) in Afghanistan. He first whets her appetite by offering “a real story” – as opposed to the natural disasters and tabloid drivel that we see blanketing the network every time a television is in view. He responds to her one-track needling entirely in sound bites; after bragging that we’ve broken the enemy’s backs, he admits when pressed that our troops have only recently “learned the enemy can crawl with broken backs.” Jasper sees the media’s wholesale reversal in attitude towards the president and the war as a betrayal. “You didn’t support the war—you sold it,” he barks, towering over a seated Streep. “Now it’s time to sell the solution.”

What’s really amazing is that Redford wants us to infer that this encounter sends Streep’s reporter into an emotional tailspin about the function of her profession in an increasingly corporate media culture. The intended takeaway, I suppose, is that the media is bad, but politicians are worse for trying to control it. But all I took away was the image of Cruise, looking down into the camera, and icon restored to his pedestal, accusing the media of turning on him. If the only politics that Tom Cruise truly cares about are the politics of fame, then this is his “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more” moment. It’s a stunningly solipsistic first salvo in his campaign as movie mogul, pure evidence that the vertical integration of studio exec/producer/movie star is simply a bad idea. One can only imagine what delights Valkyrie has in store.