Men Who Stare at Goats Review

"Men Who Stare at Goats" reviews

Movie

Men Who Stare at Goats

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2009-10-28 15:55:54

Rating

4/5

Provider

Review

If there is such a sure thing in Hollywood when looking for movies for grown ups, it’s becoming increasingly clear that George Clooney is the man to look out for.

Goodnight and Good Luck, Burn After Reading and the blistering Michael Clayton are just some of the recent Clooney movies that catered for audiences looking for more than just CGI explosions and cheap scares during a trip to the cinema.

And you can count Men Who Stare At Goats on that list.

Playing at the London Film Festival, this Iraq war caper is obviously aiming for the anarchic tone of films like M*A*S*H and Buffalo Soldiers, and for the most part it reaches its target.

Ewan McGregor plays a down on his luck, small US town reporter called Bob Wilton. Through an upheaval in his life and a desperate need to make something of himself he stumbles upon the story of his dreams in the shape of Lyn Cassady (a mustached George Clooney).

Cassady claimed that he was part of a CIA initiative, a secret project that attempted to teach soldiers how to kill people (or goats in this case) with their mind through the teachings of new age guru Bill Django (a wonderfully funny Jeff Bridges).

Cue a series of madcap scenes as we follow Wilton’s adventures with Cassady in Kuwait while he undertakes one final mission to find his archenemy Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), as well as seeing how the whole project took place in the 70s.

It’s a strangely paced movie (it’s not often you see flashbacks in flashbacks) and so lightweight that it becomes increasingly clear there is not really a plot as it slumps to the finishing line. But the film has so much goofy charm and throwaway one-liners that will leave you grinning from ear to ear it’s not hard to go along with all the madness.

- Martin Howden

Movie

Men Who Stare at Goats

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2009-10-16 13:59:25

Rating

3.5/5

Provider

Review

What's it about?

Journalist, Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) travels to Iraq to do some 'serious' reporting and get over the break-up of his marriage. On his way he meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a mysterious man who claims to be an ex-member of the U.S. Army's First Earth Battalion, a unit that uses peaceful psychic and paranormal powers to end wars. Wilton, believing he is on to the scoop of a lifetime follows Cassady on a Black Ops mission deep behind enemy lines.

Is it any good?

Based loosely around Jon Ronson's book of the same name, The Men Who Stare at Goats is a likeable, if unspectacular movie. Peter Straughan's solid screenplay provides a number of laughs but fails to reach the heights one would expect, given the wealth of the subject matter. Clooney and McGregor form a believable and warm partnership which sparks many of the film's funnier moments.
Despite a slighting jarring American accent, Ewan McGregor is perfectly passable as journalist, Bob Wilton, investigating Clooney's legion of 'Jedi warriors' (McGregor's previous incarnation as Obi-Wan Kenobi isn't lost on the screenwriters). But it is Clooney and his army buddies who steal the film. Battalion founder, Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) and renegade psychic, Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey) give the film its sparkle and, together with Clooney, add to the movie's madcap feeling.
Without such a stellar cast, Grant Heslov's film could well have been lost among so many other buddy road movies. However Clooney, Spacey and Bridges take the film to a higher plain.

Verdict

A warm and engaging buddy movie which is elevated by the extraordinary acting talent on screen, well worth a trip to the multiplex.

- Tim Burnett

Movie

Men Who Stare at Goats

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2009-11-10 22:40:10

Rating

3/5

Provider

CinemaSource

Review

The American military has always been at the forefront of technological innovation, often working on the fringes of scientific credibility in its constant search for new ways to locate and eliminate enemies. At times, the military's eagerness to gain an edge over its adversaries has led it to some strange, dark places, many of which are chronicled in The Men Who Stare at Goats, British author Jon Ronson's real-life account of the U.S. government's efforts to create an army of "psychic supersoldiers.''

If you're not familiar with the world of psychic warfare (and really, why would you be?), the book's title refers to an experiment conducted during the 1980s at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in which specially trained soldiers, using methods culled from the top-secret First Earth Battalion Operations Manual, attempted to stop the heart of a goat using nothing but the power of the mind. The ultimate goal, obviously, was to develop the skill for eventual use on enemy combatants.

Chock full of similarly wild yet credible stories, The Men Who Stare at Goats' strange-but-true subject matter lends itself perfectly to film adaptation. Its structure — a disparate collection of loosely related vignettes covering over a 30-year timespan — does not. Nevertheless, director Grant Heslov and screenwriter Peter Straughan gave it a shot, refashioning the material to such an extent that the movie is no longer "based upon" Ronson's book but instead merely "inspired by" it.

Thankfully, Heslov kept intact two of the book's greatest strengths: its lively, irreverent tone and its fascinating array of colorful characters. The latter is no doubt what attracted the film's star-studded cast, led by George Clooney as Lyn Cassady, a fidgety veteran of the "psychic spy" brigade whose chance meeting with journalist Bob Wilton, Ronson's onscreen counterpart (played as an American, ironically, by U.K. actor Ewan McGregor), provides the catalyst for the storyline.

As Cassady squires Wilton through the Iraqi desert en route, he claims, to a contracting gig, he regales the awe-struck reporter with stories of the New Earth Army and its founder, a Vietnam vet-turned-New Age acolyte named Bill Django (Jeff Bridges). In the early '80s, Django, now a ponytailed flower child, managed to obtain Army approval to spearhead a pilot program that would to train a legion of "warrior monks" to read minds, pass through walls and disable enemies through a wide variety of non-lethal methods.

Any program like the New Earth Army is bound to attract its share of bad apples, amoral folk who aim to use its teachings to enrich themselves and cause harm to others. In The Men Who Stare at Goats, the entire rotten orchard is represented by Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), a sleazy, manipulative charlatan whose devious machinations ultimately serve to bring down the entire operation.

Goats is at its loopy best as Cassady cycles through various off-the-wall anecdotes of Django and his increasingly bizarre training methods. But it falls apart when Heslov attempts to weave it all into a coherent storyline, complete with a climax centered on a hairbrained scheme to spike the water supply at an American fort with LSD. It's understandable that Heslov felt compelled to invent something that could bring some resolution to the story, but getting everyone high on acid? It sounds like a gimmick stolen from one of the lesser Revenge of the Nerds sequels.

Needless to say, that last part wasn't in Ronson's book.

Hollywood.com rated this film 3 stars.