The Men Who Stare At Goats
(dir. Grant Heslov)
It's a great set-up - as anyone who's read Jon Ronson's original book will tell you. Psychic spies operating out of a US military black ops unit called the First Earth Battalion, working on off-the-wall experiments like remote viewing, running through walls and killing goats just by staring at them - it's real life X Files stuff.
There's a decent cast: George Clooney as the burnt-out psychic spy heading for one last mission in the desert; Jeff Bridges as the pony-tailed leader of the unit; Kevin Spacey the new recruit to the unit who's jealous of Clooney's psychic skills.
So why doesn't it work here? To start, Ewan McGregor doesn't help - especially when saddled with an American accent that isn't that convincing.
But the main problem is that this is a film in search of a story. Watching Clooney and McGregor running around lost in the desert alternating with flashbacks to the First Earth Battalion's wacky history is quite amusing, and occasionally funny, but it's not exactly gripping.
Feels like everyone's coasting on their charm here - with little from Clooney, Spacey or Bridges that we haven't seen before, and more than enough of that McGregor flatness that we have. One reference to the unit thinking of themselves as "Jedis" is kind of funny - using it all the way through the film and expecting us not to immediately think - "yeah and look what Ewan did when HE had Jedi powers" - is just annoying.
By the time we get to see some of the "dark side" applications of the experimental army techniques - ie a glib hint at the terrors of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib etc - it's far too little too late; especially when it culminates in a bizarre desert romp episode - pretty offensive given the scale of the real life incidents it alludes to, rather than hitting the kind of Catch 22 levels of satire it seems to be aiming for.
It's also one of the first films in recent years to cop out with an 80s freezeframe ending.
6th Nov 2009 - Tumblr
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