In celebration of all the talk about Jedi warriors in The Men Who Stare at Goats, let’s put it this way: This is not the political satire you’re looking for.
Unless, that is, you’re seeking something more amiable and aimless than forceful and focused from George Clooney, who closes out this decade with a Middle East movie that’s far less dangerously robust than 1999’s Three Kings. (Of Clooney’s various Mideast films, this one is easily the meekest.)
At least Men gives a name to that cockeyed ocular technique Clooney uses when comedy turns crazy in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Welcome to Collinwood, Burn After Reading and, now, Men.
Here, it’s called “sparkly-eyes technique,” although the gleam is faded in a drably directed film by Grant Heslov, who generates great lighting and locations but also a meandering feeling indicative of Men’s aversion to plot or a point.
George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey Star in The Men Who Stare at Goats
Speaking of Star Wars, what’s with Ewan McGregor’s pinched accent as Bob Wilton, a cuckolded Michigan reporter in the Middle East to find himself professionally? Unable to muddle through the word “understand” without revealing his brogue, McGregor sounds like a crazy stand-up voice Robin Williams might use.
Once in the Middle East, Bob stumbles upon a source tied to a story he wrote off as silly back in Ann Arbor — the claims of a former Army man that he can kill animals with his mind and “remotely view” faraway locations from the comfort of his couch.
That man is Lyn Cassady (Clooney), undercover as a contractor while supposedly on a secret mission. Seeing the loony Lyn as his passport into Iraq for meaty journalism, Bob hooks up with him and is immediately placed in harm’s way.
Meanwhile, Lyn regales Bob with the flashback story of the founding of the New Earth Army — a monk-like mixture of martial skills and Zen concentration meant to turn inherent rookie-soldier gentleness into something worthy of psychic combat.
Wearing a longhair wig making him look like Schneider from One Day at a Time, Clooney’s Lyn is the teacher’s pet of this platoon led by hippie-dippie Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) and ultimately undone by snake-in-the-grass faker Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), who hijacked the unit’s powers to kill goats with their minds
Low on Laughs, The Men Who Stare at Goats Largely Wastes Its Quartet of Classy Actors
Men is a lark that’s low on laughs and mostly wasteful of a quartet of classy actors who’ve all been better, and funnier, in previous efforts.
Clooney goofily dances around to both Billy Idol and Billy Squier in those flashbacks. McGregor founders in a part better suited to Jason Bateman or Aaron Eckhart (who probably declined after Suspect Zero, his own bomb about remote viewing). And nearly all of Bridges and Spacey’s good scenes are in the trailer, save for one where Spacey channels his goofy-voiced spirit guide by rolling his eyes back in his head.
There is one fleeting moment of utter hilarity when Lyn demonstrates the various and sundry weapon properties of “the Predator” — which looks like a tiny ice scraper — on Bob.
Otherwise, Peter Straughan’s thin script oddly cuts away from brief rises of action to a flashback about a man who could dangle sandbags from his scrotum. As one soldier comments in that scene, what exactly is the point of this exercise? Later, Bob makes a crack about “the silence of the goats” and an exchange of friendly fire between American contractors has the same free-form shapelessness as John Cusack’s underwhelming War Inc.
The Men Who Stare at Goats Takes a Hard Left Into Sentimentality That's Unearned
Men eventually takes a hard left into sentimentality while never spelling out exactly that at which we’re supposed to be mad — the transformation of ineffective psychic operations into hardened torture is a big leap to make. If Jon Ronson’s nonfiction book — from which Men is inspired — suggested that, it’s lost here. (Plus, Rolfe Kent’s overwrought score embarrassingly swells upon the release of several prisoners about whom we know nothing.)
Somewhere in here, there’s a lament for perverting the — to quote the war-satire granddaddy — purity of essence in enlightenment to something easily exploited by the military complex. But, like the film’s test goats shot in the leg or, worse yet, felled by a look that kills, it’s been de-bleated.
Nick Rogers - Nick Rogers has been an editor and writer in the fields of arts & entertainment and features for the past 13 years. This isn't surprising ...
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