Opening with the message that, “More of this is true than you might believe”, The Men Who Stare At Goats does embellish the tale it takes as its inspiration, but nonetheless retains the spirit and humour of Jon Ronson’s original non-fiction book. The film, revolving around a fictional journalist’s endeavour to find out about a top-secret psychic military programme, is a slightly whacky comedy featuring some hilarious performances from an impressive cast. Let’s face it, any movie that can boast the acting talents of Ewan McGregor, George Clooney, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey is on to a winner.
Reacting badly to the breakdown of his marriage, Bob Wilton (McGregor), a small-time reporter in Ann Arbor, Michigan decides that the most rational thing to do would be to go to the Persian gulf and cover the Iraq war. There, he stumbles upon special forces veteran Lyn Cassady (Clooney) who claims to have been a part of an experimental US Army project that sought to investigate the possibility of using paranormal and supernatural abilities in fighting wars – in short, to see if the United States could become “the first superpower to use superpowers”.
Finding the story outlandish to the point of incredulity, Wilton decides to tag along as Cassady searches for the project’s founder, Bill Django (Bridges) who has gone missing in the Iraqi desert. On the way, Wilton learns all about the weird experiments carried out by Django’s ‘New Earth Army’ and how the unit eventually met its end due to the machinations of ambitious psychic Larry Hooper (Spacey).
The cast is exceptional, with Clooney and Bridges just brilliant throughout. McGregor is probably the weakest of the lot, and I for one find his American accent so unconvincing that it really does grate, but he plays the straight man pretty well – perhaps it’s purely by comparison with the endless amusement provided by the turns of Clooney, Bridges and Spacey that he comes off as less-than-impressive. Clooney performs with comic genius, while you can imagine The Dude from The Big Lebowski and you’ve pretty much got Bridges’ performance in a nutshell. Spacey’s vaguely Macchiavellian character is also a delight.
Far-fetched-but-believable accounts of attempts to read minds, predict the future, pass through walls and kill goats by staring at them make for comedy gold, and the very notion of an army turning to new age, hippy, peace-and-love ideas is guaranteed to raise. The movie is not without a serious message too, as the bizarre, new age-y experiments of the story are strongly linked with the psychological interrogative methods carried out in the real world. The veracity of this is highlighted in the instances of musical torture carried out in Guantanamo, and the recent attempts by musicians tofind out whether their music was used for such an abominable purpose.
The darker elements to the story are merely touched upon however, and on the whole The Men Who Stare At Goats is a light-hearted romp that glories in the humourous japes created when new age principles are adopted by an army attempting to create a battalion of Jedi warriors.
Definitely a force to be reckoned with.
- Sebastian Clare
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Albums of the week
College fund burning a hole in your pocket? If you would rather spend your money on music than themed stationary this year, here's a round-up of the albums we're loving this week.
