With its bizarre title, ‘The Men Who Stare At Goats’ has something going for it beyond its star-studded cast. Why are they staring at goats? Movie executives are hoping the desire to find out will cause audiences to flock to the theatres this weekend. But I can report that after seeing the film, I’m only left with more questions.
Oh sure, director Grant Heslov tries to explain this to the audience. And he gets off on the right foot. Ewan McGregor plays Bob Wilton, a coolly detached but altogether nerdy journalist who meets Lyn Cassidy (George Clooney), a man who claims that he was once part of a super-secret military unit focused on developing superpowers ‘-‘- ‘Jedi warriors,’ as he calls it.
The Jedis were the lovechild of an officer named Bill Django (Jeff Bridges, in full-on ‘Big Lebowski’ mode) and his new-age, ’70s hippie philosophy, which interestingly enough he successfully pitched to the Pentagon. But although Cassidy becomes the absolute best of the psychic soldiers, developing strange yet useless abilities like ‘cloudbursting,’ the unit is torn apart from within by a sniveling weasel named Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey). When Wilton meets up with Cassidy, he decides to accompany him on his ‘secret mission’ to Iraq, only to find that Cassidy might not actually be as delusionally insane as all of this makes him out to be.
Is any of this making sense? No? Add in the fact that the film begins with the disclaimer, ‘more of this is true than you would think,’ and the story is even more muddled.
The film has its funny moments and is amusing in the sense that you wonder how many of the extremely far-fetched incidents actually took place. At times, it seems like Heslov is reaching to make some kind of political statement, but he never outright condemns the Pentagon for these practices and a scene in the middle concerning private security forces in Iraq seems out of place.
I suppose there could be a minor outrage over our military approving something so silly, but given that the truth of what really happened is so clouded its difficult to make a judgment. And so, ‘The Men Who Stare At Goats’ plays out as a heavily embellished rambling bar tale, something that is enjoyable to sit through but in the end leaves you feeling cold, like you lost time that you’ll never get back.’ ‘ ‘
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