Review: The Men Who Stare At Goats

Nov 6 2009 by Barbara Hodgson, The Journal

Running time: 1hr 33mins
Certificate: 15
Starring: George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey
Director: Grant Heslov
Star rating: 4

APPROACHING a bigwig Hollywood executive with a pitch for a black comedy set during the Iraq war takes some guts – so it’s a triumph for quirky filmmaking that ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’ ever got made.

Based on a book by journalist Jon Ronson, who’s well-known for his studies of fringe nutters and conspiracy theorists, the film follows the bizarre activities of a ‘psychic unit’ within the US army.

Formed to counter a similar unit in Russia (which never existed in the first place), the soldiers are seen to experiment with mind-reading, race-specific stink bombs, subliminal propaganda, walking through walls and of course killing goats by staring at them. It jumps between the unit’s initial inception as the New Earth Army in the early 80s (cue dodgy moustaches) to their covert operations in Iraq some 20 years later.

Ewan McGregor plays reporter Bob Wilton, whose wife runs off with his creepy metal-armed editor, leaving him vulnerable and searching for something to make him complete.

He heads to Iraq to try and prove himself to his ex, but ends up meeting secret U.S. military psychic soldier Lynn Cassady (George Clooney) in the hotel bar.

A road movie style adventure ensues - with Lynn demonstrating his arsenal of pychological warfare techniques such as mesmerising the enemy with his ‘sparkly eyes’ stare and dissipating clouds just by looking at them.

Although Bob’s reasons for getting embroiled are made clear, the film doesn’t really explain why Lynn and the other soldiers have swallowed so many nutty ideas. But the chemsitry between Bob and Lynn is rather sweet.

And the plot that holds the big comic set pieces together is thinner than an After Eight mint - but with the laughs coming thick and fast, you really don’t care.

Much of the comedy is derived from the juxtaposition of po-faced military seriousness with the ludicrous New Age inspired experiments they undertake.

The one upmanship between Lynn and his nemesis Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey) is a case in point, as both strain to please their laid-back mentor Bill Django, played effortlessley by the eternal dude Jeff Bridges.

Overall this is a great script by Gateshead-born screnwriter Peter Straughan, who clearly had plenty of top-notch material to mine from Jon Ronson’s book.

I also loved the great use of chirpy music from Supergrass’s We Are Young at the start to Boston’s More than a Feeling over the end credits.

It’s essentially a very funny film about crazy thinking at the heart of power - something which never seems to go away if you believe stories that the army were recently developing a pheromone releasing ‘gay bomb’ and drafting in psychics to pinpoint the whearabouts of Bin Laden.

The endnote “more of this is true than you would believe” is sure to have you trawling the Internet to ascertain what was truth and what was fiction.

Karen Wilson

BLACK COMEDY

THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS

(1hr 33mins)

Certificate: 15

Starring: George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey

Director: Grant Heslov

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