Director(s): Grant Heslov. Screenplay: Peter Straughan. Cast: George Clooney, Ewan Mcgregor, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey. Runtime: 90 minutes. Cert: 15. Year: 2009.
PARTB Rating: 2 stars
The Men Who Stare At Goats is a funny film: not laugh-out-loud funny – although it would certain like to think it is; more , it’s funny in that it’s an extremely unusual film. Adapted from the book of the same name, by Jon Ronson, Goats is about the U.S. Army’s exploration of New Age concepts in both the Cold and Iraq wars and the potential military uses of the paranormal.
Ewan McGregor stars as Bob Wilton: a reporter who tries to find himself after his wife leaves him by becoming a war correspondent in post-Hussein Iraq. Sadly he is a giant gaping plot device with no discernible personality in which all the events in the film implausibly happen around. Whilst in Kuwait, and waiting to start reporting ‘on the front line’, Bob meets up with Lyn Cassidy (Clooney) who ends up revealing his secret to him: he’s a psychic spy on a top secret mission. Eager to find some form of action, Bob enthusiastically tags along into the deserts of Iraq.
One of the main problems with the film is that the Bob-Lyn relationship never really goes anywhere. Clooney portrays Lyn not as someone who genuinely believes he has psychic powers (or even, on the other hand, someone who has possible psychiatric issues), but instead like his character in the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? In fact, the film feels as if it’s trying to be some war-homage to the Coen brothers’ comedic efforts such as O Brother, Raising Arizona, and Burn After Reading, but unfortunately misses the mark by a back country mile.
The film gets considerably better when Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey become involved. Bridges plays Bill Django, the creator of the military psychic spy unit, and revels in his role as a hippie let loose in the military. Spacey plays Larry Hooper, a disgruntled, stuffy science fiction writer drafted into the military who realises there are people who are better than him and can’t cope. The scenes between these two are both the most comic and dramatic. If the film were based more on these people and not the other two expository pieces of crap for characters, the film would be considerably better to show for it.
Goats isn’t completely without merit: Bridges and Spacey perform their parts admirably, and the scene which lends its name to the title is very well done.
Unfortunately, the rest of the film doesn’t do nearly as well due to its focus on the Bob-Lyn relationship (which goes nowhere) and the fact that it tries to cram bits of Coen-style comedy into scenes in which the natural absurdity of the situation should be allowed to shine.
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