Review of The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009) by Tom M — 16 Apr 2011

"The Men Who Stare At Goats" covers some familiar territory for any of you that listened to Art Bell's old Coast-To-Coast AM occult / conspiracy / UFO radio show late at night. He used to have folks on claiming to be the kinds of government soldiers depicted in this film: psychic soldiers training their minds for use as weapons and spy tools. Phasing through walls, stoping hearts by staring at someone or remotely viewing distant locations behind enemy lines with only their minds. The Soviets were fooled into taking this stuff seriously and started seriously working on it themselves. So the US had to look into it too, and set up a military division to work on it...Seriously.

If I had to put a label on it, I think I would call this "The Big Lebowski" of Gulf War movies, not due to just to the fact that it's a natural cult comedy that's similar in execution, but because it has also got Jeff Bridges playing a kind of military version of The Dude as well.

The cast is great, the premise is wacky and fun, and the execution is excellent. This is the kind of film where you can tell the actors play it all to the hilt because they seem to actually be having fun.

George Clooney's character is particularly fun because he actually turns out to be a bit of gold among the gravel the army is panning for: he seems to actually have psychic powers. The strange army division actually seems to have discovered something unique! But self-doubt and circumstances create a depression that causes him to loose his connection with the universe he naturally had tapped into in his carefree army days.