The Men Who Stare At Goats: Randomly Awesome

The Plot:

Meet small town reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor). Bob has problems. An unfulfilling stagnant career, a wife who has left him for a colleague and an impending mid-life crisis, Bob takes off to cover the Iraqi war to prove his worth but ends up in Kuwait unable to get across the border.

This is when  Bob meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a wartime entrepreneur who soon reveals himself to be a  “re-activated” Jedi Warrior on a secret mission. Cassady is one of a number of soldiers enlisted in the dubious First Earth Battalion, a military project developed during the Cold War which attempted to create psychic spies (Jedi-Warriors) who could pacify enemies non-violently, turn invisible, walk through solid objects and combat war and hostility through the power of suggestion.

Adapted from the strange-but-true nonfiction series of essays and interviews of writer and documentary filmmaker Jon Ronson about the U.S. Army’s “First Earth Battalion,” a top-secret unit started in 1979 to develop and test new-age fighting techniques. While the Battalion never achieved success in the desired areas (that we know of), it still exists today developing experimental new torture techniques (apparently) for use in places such as Iraq.

The story is told as a narrative from Wilton’s point of view and interchangeably follows Wilton and Cassady into Iraq while revealing in flash-back mode how these psychic spies came about.

The Verdict:

You would be forgiven for thinking it to be a Coen Brothers Movie - The Men Who Stare at Goats is the most random movie I’ve seen in a long time. Of course to archive the desired effect there is plenty of artistic licence employed and there is very little fact remaining from the source.

The dialogue is clever but not so much as to alienate it’s audience.  The physical comedy is slick and frequent and Clooney pulls it off without breaking a sweat on his beautiful manly mustached face (yes, I have a thing for George Clooney. He’s mine, I saw him first!).  Wilton (McGregor) plays both the cynic and then gradually the believer as each loony step towards a conclusion delves into more random discoveries about the nature of the mission.

Director Grant Heslov creates a stylish film which strikes an even balance between some heavy hitting names: Clooney, McGregor, Bridges, Spacey.  Jeff Bridges essentially plays The Dude from The Big Lebowski but I don’t see that there’s anything wrong with that, The Dude rocks!  While Kevin Spacey’s role is small and not entirely relevant but when Kevin Spacey agrees to be in your movie you just shut up and bask in his dulcet-toney goodness.

The movie is flawed in many ways. One of the problems with it is that it lacks a proper antagonist. While Spacey is pushed forward as the baddie as the movie progresses it is revealed that this is not necessarily the case. The ending is weak and delirious and while the plot looks stead-fast on paper on screen it becomes a nonsensical, albeit hilarious mishmash of a  buddy-war-mystery-action-slapstick-drama-comedy. That’s a genre right?

What saves the movie in my eyes is that it was sufficiently entertaining and enjoyable to overcome these flaws. Maybe it could have done with a little more concept development but the movie makers were obviously excited about it and put plenty of passion into the final package.

The Men Who Stare at Goats is surreal and charming, lighthearted and zany if altogether lacking purpose and I really liked it.  Just don’t go in expecting anything more than to laugh and enjoy this lovely movie and to come out with a feeling that you’ve just been slipped a mild hallucinogenic.

The Men Who Stare At Goats will be in cinemas from 6th November 2009.