The Men Who Stare At Goats Review

Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 11.09.2009

More of this review is true than you would believe.

Directed by: Grant Heslov
Written by: Peter Straughan

Starring:
George Clooney - Lyn Cassady
Ewan McGregor - Bob Wilton
Jeff Bridges - Bill Django
Kevin Spacey - Larry Hooper
Robert Patrick - Todd Nixon
Stephen Lang - General Hopgood
Stephen Root - Gus Lacey
Rebecca Mader - Helen
Glenn Morshower - Major Jim Holtz



Running Time: 90 minutes
Rated R for language, some drug content and brief nudity.

Films about the Iraq War have been box office and, largely, critical poison over the last several years. Americans grew increasingly tired of their country's presence in formerly Hussein-ruled country, and as such weren't interested in watching films that dramatized the involvement of the country and our troops there. While The Hurt Locker garnered much critical praise and some commercial success this summer, it stands out almost as a lone soldier in a battalion of noble failures. Audiences have shown they aren't interested in films such as Stop-Loss, Lions for Lambs, In The Valley of Elah, Home of the Brave and other such films. All of those films had one thing in common—they were all serious dramas which played it straight down the middle and didn't try to go for laughs. Someone was eventually bound to wonder then—how audiences would take a comedy about the war? Along comes The Men Who Stare At Goats, starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey, to answer that question.

The movie first introduces us to Robert Wilton (McGregor), a reporter for a small local newspaper who interviews a man (Root) who claims to have been part of a group of "psychic spies" within the US Army. Wilton takes nothing that the man says seriously. However, when his wife leaves him for his one-armed boss and he finds himself running to Iraq in a misguided attempt to prove his manhood to her, he ends up running into Lyn Cassady (Clooney). Lyn is, as it turns out, a part of that same unit, retired of course—or is he? When fate and an errant doodle convinces Lyn to bring Bob along with him, the two venture into Iraq and Bob regales us with the story of the New Earth Army, this top-secret organization, and how its founder Bill Django (Bridges) brought it to new heights before jealousy and a poisonous new recruit (Spacey) brought it to ruin. As they stumble through misadventures on the way toward the mission Lyn claims to be on, Bob wonders how much of this is true—and if he's ever going to get out of Iraq alive.

The Men Who Stare At Goats is written by Peter Straughan, inspired by the book of the same name by Jon Ronson. It begins with the disclaimed that "more of this is true than you would believe," and for some that might be an immediate turn-off. After all, the military—the American military—wouldn't be so crazy as to spend on a black ops budget for things like remote viewing (aka clairvoyance), LSD experimentation and being able to kill goats just by staring at them, would it? Psychic soldiers is just too silly of a concept, some might think, especially during a scene in which the approval of the military is gained because the Russians are experimenting with it based on an unsubstantiated rumor that the Americans are, which in turn causes the Americans to do so. This is the kind of humorous situation that one would expect to be in Dr. Strangelove, and there are a lot of comparisons which can be made to that film. One of the key comparisons is that, similar to that film, this movie's politics are not as far-left as one might think. Certainly, the spacey hippies—Django and Lynn—are the heroes of the New Age Army, and Spacey's Larry Hooper stands with Glenn Morshower's Major Jim Holtz as the villains who must be stopped. But at the same time there's a lot of silliness attributed to the hippies, and in the end it's not so much about who's wrong and who's right. It's not even about whether the story is true or not. In many ways, Stare at Goats is a metaphor for the levels to which governments will reach to declare victory. It could just as easily be about the arms race—and really, it is about an arms race of sorts. Just not the kinds of arms you can attain without crystals or meditating while listening to Boston.

The main thing which makes this film work is the performances. In the wrong hands, the characters of this movie could be viewed as abject failures. Luckily the talented cast makes this work very well. George Clooney plays Lyn Cassady with just enough zaniness to be hysterical, yet not going so far as to make him over the top. Yes, there is an inherent loony quality to Cassady, but making him little more than a caricature would have done irreparable damage to the film. Clooney knows just when to pull back from that brink. Jeff Bridges is as good as he's ever been here. Many are comparing his performance to that of the Dude in The Big Lebowski, and there are certain correlations that can be drawn. This is a different sort of stoner though, and the way he brings him out, both during the idealistic days of the New Earth Army and the darker present, takes a different level of skill that Bridges handles nicely. Larry Hooper is given a slimy, snake oil salesman style by Kevin Spacey. He's a science fiction writer who was brought in and who, it is quickly discovered, has no actual talent of his own, and by the time we reach the present he's using "psychology ops" as a way to hide his new vision of the psychic soldier. The L. Ron Hubbard associations are very hard to miss, and Spacey does very well in the role. Working against all this lunacy is Ewan McGregor as the straight man, and the eyes of the audience. The New Earth Army calls its soldiers "Jedi Warriors," and it's tough not to chuckle at the way McGregor, a former Jedi himself, serves as the padawan in all of this.

The direction from Grant Heslov, who produced Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck, has a tendency to keep things light and for the most part it works. It is being largely compared to the works of the Coen brothers due to the zany nature of the story and the presence of actors like Bridges and Clooney, and there is certainly some of that tone evident in the "stranger than fiction" take the film puts on the premise. At the same time, it doesn't go as far into left field as some of the Coens' work and that's probably a good thing. Heslov doesn't bring constant and non-stop laughs, but there are many elements of the film that are quite funny. Some scenes, such as a soldier's LSD-fueled outburst that works against the New Earth Army, just don't seem to work because Heslov can't seem to decide whether it's funny or serious. It would be a difficult scene to frame under any director, but regardless he doesn't seem quite as capable in this or other scenes which try to straddle that serio-comic tone. They detract from the film a bit and briefly take the audience out of the experience, at least until another laugh brings them back in. Another problem is that, while the movie moves along speedily, by the time the last act hits there doesn't seem to be much left to go on. It sustains itself by the performance until the end, where it wraps things up a bit too neatly. It doesn't make the film a loss by any stretch though, and there's far more to enjoy than there is to dislike.

The 411: Is The Men Who Stare At Goats really based on a true story? It's hard to say, and perhaps it doesn't even matter. What matters is that Grant Heslov and Peter Straughan have put together a rare comedy about the War in Iraq, and in a more general sense a metaphor for the nonsensical lengths that governments will take to achieve victory. Containing a Dr. Strangelove-like feel without ever really reaching the heights of Kubrick's farcical masterpiece, it is nonetheless a funny film that features some very good performances from George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey and Ewan McGregor. It's not a constant, laugh-out-loud riot, but it's still very entertaining and is likely to leave audiences remembering what works far more than what doesn't.

Final Score:  7.5   [ Good ]