I'd like to believe Jedi Knights exist. I'm still pretty much a big kid at heart, and the thought of American super soldiers running around blasting people with telepathic fury sounds hella cool. Plus they get the best robes money can buy. The kind that don't pick up dust as they trail along the ground. The Men Who Stare at Goats posits a world where these men exist...in a sense. It's based on a "true story", although we're let on pretty early that only some of it actually is. Too bad it wasn't completely made up, then maybe it could've been a lot funnier and more interesting.
Ewan McGregor plays a journalist from Michigan named Wilbur. Wilbur's a little bored and disillusioned with his profession at the moment. He longs to be one of those gritty, grizzled war correspondents embedded on the front lines. He happens to interview a kook who reveals himself to be a part of the Army's paranormal unit, known as the New Earth Army. Then, in a shocking bit of happenstance, Wilbur runs into that unit's most prized student, Lynn Cassidy(George Clooney). Lynn is a nutjob as well, but a devoted, serious, and somewhat dangerous nutjob. He regals Lynn with stories of secret psychic training sessions, all of which were designed to make them lethal spiritual super soldiers or something. It's never really clear what the goal actually is. We see them training on occasion, but it amounts to little more than prancing around a room like ballerinas.
The film jumps around quite a bit between the present day as Lynn and Wilbur make their misguided journey through Iraq, and the past when Lynn was the student of New Earth Army founder Bill Django(Jeff Bridges). Django considered Lynn to be his prized pupil, gifted in the way of the psychic arts. Lynn's chief rival is Hooper(Kevin Spacey), a cruel egomaniac who seems to loathe the very project he's a part of.
It's all quite scattershot and frankly not all that funny, which is pretty hard to do considering the phenomenal talent involved. I never quite bought into Clooney's character, who never really seems to have a goal to shoot for. Is he trying to bring the unit back? To redeem it? What's his point? It's occasionally funny to watch Clooney bug out his eyes(his comic schtick) and leap headlong into a fight he probably won't win, but it quickly grows tiresome. Bridges is basically re-playing his role as The Dude in The Big Lybowski, and I love that. Too bad we don't get nearly enough of it. Spacey's Hooper is dripping with villanious intent. His every word is like acid. It's like he's channeling Lex Luthor all over again. This would've been a better film if they had cut out completely all of the present day stuff with Lynn and Wilbur and focused solely on the New Earth Army's rise and fall. Ewan McGregor is about as lifeless and dull here as he's ever been. I'm starting to forget why I ever liked him in anything. He seems to be reduced somehow now to bland supporting roles(see also: Amelia, Angels & Demons).
The title The Men Who Stare at Goats comes from a scene in which Lynn stares at a poor, defenseless goat and supposedly kills it with his mind. I'm fairly certain no goats were harmed in the making of this film.
4/10
