Should writers Matthew Michael Carnahan and Aaron ‘West Wing’ Sorkin ever meet, it is quite conceivable that the world will collapse into a black hole of self-righteous, all-American smugness.

They are purveyors of a weird sort of jingoistic gliberalism, whereby fabulously quick-witted Americans admit to their mistakes but leave nobody in any doubt that their country and way of life is so much better than yours.

Not long ago, Carnahan gave us the gung-ho antics of The Kingdom wherein the poor Saudis had to be shown how to protect themselves by smarter, sexier Yanks like Jennifer Garner and Jamie Foxx.

Now we have Robert Redford deploying his liberal might to help Carnahan tell us little people (or at least little Americans) to take a stand and put ourselves on the line for world peace.

In an Afghan war zone, a US helicopter comes under enemy fire, leaving soldiers Ernest (World Trade Center’s Michael Pena) and Arian (Derek Luke) injured and isolated in a snowstorm. Their commander (Kingdom director Peter Berg) is on top of the rescue, but the Taliban are closing in.

The imperilled friends enlisted while at college in California, where at that moment their old tutor Dr Malley (Redford) is having a serious one-to-one with Todd (Andrew Garfield), a bright but apathetic idler.

While Malley cajoles Todd into bucking up his ideas, over in Washington, political journalist Janine Roth (Streep) is conducting an interview with die-hard Republican senator Jasper Irving (Cruise).

Irving is keen to unveil his latest military strategy for Afghanistan. Yet despite his finest neo-con arguments, Janine can see that his roadmap to victory is actually a minefield of bullshit.

Moving slickly between the three strands, Redford uses Ernest and Arian’s situation to throw all that Stateside talk into sharp, actionful relief.

The performances are first-rate. Cruise and Streep execute their double-act with customary aplomb while the relatively unknown, Surrey-bred Garfield does his propects no harm in holding his own opposite Redford at his most avuncular.

And the script does provide some food for thought and occasional flashes of dry wit and irony: a mocked-up photo of Cruise and Bush Jr; a black soldier called Arian; the soldier who confidently yells “They haven’t used that gun for years!”…

But consider this jaw-dropper from Streep to Cruise: “What have we been doing for six years? World War Two took less than five.” Beg pardon?

Does Carnahan know nothing about history, or is he taking his cue from Saving Private Ryan in presuming that WWII only counted while America was involved? Either way, it indicates a shamefully blinkered worldview.

If Hollywood is going to insist on broadcasting calls for the world to wake up and smell the coffee, it’s time to stop strangling them with the Stars and Stripes. And you can quote me on that.

Elliott Noble