Review of The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009) by Paul S — 03 Mar 2011

A dark satire on psychobabble and government dark ops that sets up a nice premise, rolls along nicely with some humorous moments, and then loses its way about two thirds through (and the film is only 90 minutes long - too bad they couldn't sustain the balance of absurdity without going over the top).

Having to resort to the gimmick of lacing the drinking water of an army base with LSD should tell you how badly the last act fails. To top it off, that sequence simply isn't funny (except for one line when a half track gunner (the guy on top) yells out "look out for the fence" shortly before the half track flattens it - at which point the gunner says "cool, missed it").

But prior to the scenes in the army base the film does a pretty good job of telling the story of a sad sack journalist who goes to Iraq (well actually he can't get permission to get into Iraq so "reports" from Kuwait) and meets up with a former member of an elite team of "psychic warriors" who were trained to use their mental abilities for everything from mind control to covert ops. George Clooney does a wonderful turn (and no surprise there) as the psychic warrior, while the back-story is fleshed out in a series of flashbacks occuring while Clooney takes the reporter on a "secret mission" into Iraq.

There seems to be just enough believability in Clooney's story to keep the journalist interested in spite of his rational mind telling him that there is no way that the army actually developed a group of Kreskins. The scenes involving the formation of the squad were amusing - and I especially enjoyed the founder of the group (solidly played by Jeff Bridges) on his search of discovery - hot tubs in Santa Rosa, acid trips in Stockton, etc - being a northern Californian by birth, I KNOW these places.

The pacing and story telling thus far works well - just when you think that the journalist (and you the viewer) starts having doubts concerning all the psychobabble Clooney pulls off something that could be determined to be psychic (if you had an open mind about such things). This suspension of belief (or perhaps affirmation of a certain kind of belief) keeps you guessing and keeps the tone of the film, while slightly tongue in cheek, at least half believable - until Clooney and the journalist arrive at the "secret" base, being run by Kevin Spacey (who is totally wasted, and by that I mean misused, not fucked up wasted, although he is that as well).

I really enjoyed the set up and was having quite a good time with the film until the arrival at the base. It was almost as if they had written themselves a sly little film and had placed all the various parts together, only to not know what to do with them. Certainly, as I previously mentioned - they took an easy way out - which fell flat - when one could see the possibilities for mining so much more out of the set up.

As the disclaimer at the beginning of the film states - more of this is true than you might believe - the same can be said for this review.