The Men Who Stare at Goats

The Men Who Stare at Goats is pretty much what you'd expect from a film bearing that title: an oddball, off-the-wall comedy. It's fitfully amusing, with some genuinely hysterical bits, but it's also an unfocused, incoherent and silly mess without any real point. Still, it's a passable enough waste of 93 minutes, provided you aren't too discriminating in your tastes.

Hard-luck journalist Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), with his life falling apart - the death of a co-worker, his wife leaving him - goes to Iraq to try and make something of himself. While in Kuwait he meets Lyn Cassidy (George Clooney), a shady businessman who claims to have worked as part of a top-secret government project to harness psychic energy for military use. Wilton thinks Cassidy is nuts, but after accompanying him to Iraq, he grows convinced that he's telling the truth - and perhaps even that there's something to the idea. In a series of flashbacks, we meet Cassidy's colleagues: Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), a decidedly unconventional officer who hopes to use his psychic powers for good; General Hopgood (Stephen Lang), a General who convinces the Pentagon that such a project is worthwhile; and Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), the military bureaucrat with more sinister plans. Eventually, Wilton finds that the project may not have been cancelled at all, and he, Bob and Bill team up to prevent it from being used for nefarious purposes.

The Men Who Stare at Goats has a lot of funny individual sequences that never really come together. I was hoping for some sort of Aaron Sorkin-esque satire - namely, questioning why the hell the US Army would spend so much time and money on such an idiotic project - but the movie treats it as a really cool idea; the film's commentary is limited to a few snide comments about the Iraq War and the use military applications for evil. That's fair enough, I suppose - not every comedy can be Doctor Strangelove - but it leads to an overall frivolous, silly and disjointed atmosphere that uses its interesting premise as an excuse for a series of increasingly goofy jokes. Some work - Bill's journey of self-discovery, Lyn demonstrating his "abilities" to Bob, an accidental shootout between two groups of security contractors - but as the film goes along, more and more bomb. There's no real point to anything that's happening, no drive, no focus; the ostensible present-day plot is a drag, with the flashbacks providing most of the entertainment. The movie's "climax" is beyond stupid, and it ends with a dull feel-good thud.

Perhaps the fault for the film's failings belong to director Grant Heslov (a Pittsburgh native, I feel obligated to note). Primarily an actor and writer, Heslov doesn't really distinguish himself with a rather banal directing job. The movie has some nice landscape shots courtesy of cinematographer Robert Elswit, but overall the film looks uninteresting and feels disjointed. Peter Straughan's script carefully balances wit with absurdity, though it falters in the storytelling and characterizations; with a better director and a few re-writes, it might have made a great film.

George Clooney provides the balance of the film's laughs, playing Lyn as a man who earnestly believes the crazy things he's worked on (though it's not hard when the film believes them, too). Ewan McGregor has the only character with anything resembling depth - his loss of and need to prove himself are fairly rote but well-realized - and he acquits himself reasonably well. Jeff Bridges plays - surprise! - a spaced-out hippie; how amusing a viewer finds him depends on how much they're willing to put up with his eighty-third revival of The Big Lebowski (in my case: only up to a point). Kevin Spacey, however, is his usual wooden and boring self. Stephen Lang, who appears to be making a comeback between this, Public Enemies and the upcoming Avatar, has some fine scenes as a credulous Army general. Robert Patrick (Terminator 2) receives ridiculously high billing for a two-minute walk-on, though it's nice to see him in something that's not a direct-to-video action flick.

I can't really claim that The Men Who Stare at Goats disappointed me; it has enough funny moments that make it worthwhile, but the flaws are serious enough to detract from it. When the best thing about a movie is its title, there's usually a problem. Ultimately, for all the jokes that work, it's a hollow and frivolous piece of work; I doubt it has much rewatch value.