Review of The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009) by Matthew D — 25 Mar 2014

I saw The Men Who Stare at Goats years ago but could not make sense of it, so years later I figured it would be a good time to try it again.

The Men Who Stare at Goats follows an extremely tricky line, because it follows the path of being a satire of the Iraq war through a very strange concept, and plays a character in a fish out of water situation throughout its story. But the story is really so ridiculous that a lot of the time it feels like the film is falling into spoof territory. The satirical elements end up walking a line between serious satire and spoof comedy without experiencing consistent success, so really The Men Who Stare at Goats is simply a sporadically funny comedy war comedy which is entertaining but flawed.

The Men Who Stare at Goats proves to be a film that is entertaining in parts, but as a whole the feature is merely rudimentary. The main problem is the fact that the story wants to touch upon so much in terms of exploring the idiotic elements of the Vietnam war and the lack of responsibility that the American Media, Government and soldiers are facing over there. While that is clever and somewhat funny, just as the theme is introduced and the audience is getting acquainted with it cuts to a new theme and then to another one. The pace of the story is very fast and it feels like director Grant Heslov really gave the film an overkill when attempting to craft it into one big narrative. There are a lot of loose ends in the narrative structure in The Men Who Stare at Goats, and it would be helpful if they weren't flopping around so much.

While the zany and all over the place plot in The Men Who Stare at Goats works at showing just how scattered and senseless the actual war in Iraq is, as a film the experience isn't as satisfying because while many of the moments in the film are good, more of them are very directionless and unsuccessful. The film is sporadically entertaining and the success of the humour is scattershot, but overall the experience is a barely sensible one. I walked away from the film feeling like I had seen some kind of comedy that was just a step above spoof comedy. And while it is ambitious to take that kind of approach to the touchy topic of the Iraq war and the film had the best intentions to inspire people to realise what was going on and take a more peaceful approach to the world by using harmless goats as an allegory for a lot of victimised innocent Iraqi people, it just couldn't stay solely on a single theme for any period of time and kept jumping. The Men Who Stare at Goats is a very jumpy experience, and its hard to walk away from it having learned as much as you might have hoped.

Really, The Men Who Stare at Goats wants to be both a commentary on the war in Iraq and a satire of it at the same time, but director Grant Heslov simply fails to find the appropriate balance to make it work. His direction gives a fair treatment to the script and ensures that the film has a lot of visual strength through great scenery, fine quality cinematography and fairly effective visual effects, it's just a little overwhelming in everything that it attempts to cram in there, leaving it unbalanced and with a weak structure.

But one definitely admirable quality of The Men Who Stare at Goats is the talents of its wide cast of great actors.

Ewan McGregor's lead performance feels familiar since it's rather routine, but it feels natural and makes the entire experience of the film feel all the more genuine. Ewan McGregor is a decent lead in The Men Who Stare at Goats.

George Clooney deals with the role of a really weird character in The Men Who Stare at Goats, the kind of character that filmmakers like The Coen Brothers would usually make him work with. But as he has excelled at working with them in the past, he deals justice to his role in The Men Who Stare at Goats without problem. While his character is wacky, he steps into the role without problem and breathes a lot of his lively charm into it which makes the character he plays feel more realistic and natural. The Men Who Stare at Goats is a weird film for George Clooney, but he proves his ability at stepping into diverse roles in it without a problem.

And Jeff Bridges proves again that he is a genius of an actor. As funny as it is, The Men Who Stare at Goats is not an unusual film for him to be in. He breathes his hilariously chill spirit into his character and makes him the zoned out hippie that he is written as. Jeff Bridges is a perfect addition to the cast in The Men Who Stare at Goats, and his performance is the funniest of the film. His unpredictability is well timed and never excessive, and his ability to make situations funny is refreshing, so he single handily makes the comedic elements of The Men Who Stare at Goats better.

Kevin Spacey's antagonistic and uptight performance reminds audiences everywhere of his many talents which have scored him two Academy Awards for Acting. His career has been rather bipolar since the 1990's, but his talent has been consistently strong and he proves it in The Men Who Stare at Goats through a simple performance that capitalises on his clever articulation of lines and sharp delivery. Kevin Spacey is awesome to see active again as part of the cast in The Men Who Stare at Goats, and it gives him a chance to show off his ability to work with comedic material very well.

So The Men Who Stare at Goats has the best intentions, insightful themes in its subtext and a talented cast, but its satirical elements are only sporadically funny and it loses sight of what it is doing a lot of the time so it is a rather scattershot and confusing feature.