The Men Who Stare At Goats isn't great... but it's not awful, either. Lots of people have come down hard on the film as somehow not the success it could be, but I think the troubles it has - a meandering plot and a problematic tone of dark, deadpan humor - are also its strengths, and the reaction it generates will depend on one's patience and sense of humor.
Essentially a shaggy dog - or perhaps shaggy goat is more accurate - tale of military misadventure, The Men Who Stare At Goats tells the story of an "elite squad" of military men trained in mind-bending warfare techniques, who are brought down to the earth by the realities, if not the savagries, of war. This kind of sly, sardonic take is not new - Catch 22 and Dr. Strangelove have similar darkly bemused takes; and George Clooney, who serves as the main goat starer here, probably made his best turn at this in Three Kings.
The film starts with a reporter, played by Ewan McGregor meeting an odd, slightly demented ex-military guy who claims to be able to kill hamsters with his mind - and has the tape to prove it. McGregor's charcter takes notes but never finishes the story... and eventually, with a failing marriage and a lack of purpose, traipses off to Iraq to cover the contracting scandal of the war and the waste of billions of dollars.
Instead of that story, by running into Clooney, he's drawn back into the story of the staring at animals, and the Army's secret project to develop a "psy-ops" team of super soldiers with highly developed mental skills, led by Jeff Bridges (doing his hippie, loony best). Eventually, the team is disbanded, the project falls apart, and far worse projects are discovered at a secret base in the desert.
The story itself unfolds amusingly enough in Peter Straughan's amusing script, bouncing between the modern Iraq war and the initial training sessions for the "psychic squad" which happened in the early eighties. Anyone who looks slightly askance at how the Army operates will probably find both humor and pathos in the "unorthodox" training methods, though the depiction of recent madness in Iraq doesn't really have as much impact as it could, or probably, should.
Clooney remains decidedly underrated as an actor; his commitment to the part and Gable-ish screen presence continue to pay off handsome rewards, even in modest surroundings like here. And Bridges still amazes me as one of those guys who can do anything - perhaps no one since Gene Hackman has shown quite the range of risak and success. McGregor is somewhat less successful mining the territory carved out these days by Greg Kinnear and Aaron Eckhart - clean cut, slightly off kilter, child-men who struggle to be the right kind of modern man. McGregor has every bit of the charm and looks for it, but he's capable of more and weirder, and he seems tamped down and boxed in. The effect is colorless, less than memorable... and may go a ways to explaining why The Men Who Stare At Goats entertains, but never quite comes together. To buy into the idea of its "Jedi Knight" fighting force as Army Rangers, you have to make the leap of believing in their special abilities and fly with them... and thanks to MacGregor, much of the proceedings feel earthbound, and never quite soar.
It would be easier, really, if The Men Who Stare At Goats were more porly executed, more sloppily performed, less able to connect the dots between the seventies "est culture" psychobabble and the Army training it allegedly produced. As it is, the film is a pleasant diversion, unlikely to change a mind about war that wasn't already convinced... and unlikely to kill a goat. Both, perhaps, are probably more than one should expect in a feature film.
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