Ewan McGregor plays the ghost writer for ex-Prime Minister Adam Lang’s (Pierce Brosnan, as a none-too-subtly coded Blair analogue) memoirs. Lang lives a life earning countless millions on the American lecture circuit, but constantly has to outrun peace protesters, outraged at his adventure in Iraq. Suddenly he’s indicted by the International Criminal Court in the Hague for investigation for war crimes. So far so uncomfortable, but why was his former Foreign Secretary behind it, and why did McGregor’s predecessor end up dead? Polanski takes an inordinate amount of time merely to get to the point, boring us with countless irrelevant scenes with Brosnan’s secretary Kim Cattrall (along with her hilarious English accent) an inexplicable affair with Brosnan’s wife (Olivia Williams, looking nothing like Cherie Blair), and sudden revelations about Brosnan’s university friendships with Tom Wilkinson and others which fail to set the screen alight or amount to an intelligible conspiracy. When we know Blair willingly allied himself with Bush and his PNAC cronies, and did so out of vanity at the very least, what conspiracy could Harris and Polanksi possibly paint to justify this rambling mess of a film?

Nothing. The wife killed the previous ‘Ghost’. Why? To prevent her being indicted by the ICC! Ridiculous, when he was the one in power. And why then (and how) should she then finish the film by murdering McGregor? Well over two hours utterly wasted. Two major leads with no charisma on their own or together, mystifying casting in the case of the awful and pointless Cattrall, and more British stereotypes than you can shake a stick at, ‘The Ghost’ crumbles quickly under its own pretentions. Ultimately considering the subject matter the fault for the film’s failings lies with Polanski. Given that Brosnan’s former Prime Minister is such a close analogue for Blair, this film needed to say something, either about him (it doesn’t), her (it doesn’t) or at least use McGregor to run a suspenseful chase around the real-world issues, but it doesn’t do even that. Only approaching his assassination in the penultimate act does Brosnan’s character remotely (ironically) come alive. It’s more than you can say about McGregor.

Filming stopped when Polanski was arrested in Switzerland for serious offences of his own. This unspeakable, unentertaining mess should never have seen the light of day.

2/10 (because McGregor is hot)

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And this is where the film comes unstuck. Practices developed thirty years ago for this project are being used in Iraq today, but director Grant Heslov never aims for the available satire. Instead he fixates on the Clooney/McGregor road trip, but this has its up and down sides. Whilst it allows Clooney to shine, McGregor’s oddly not up to the challenge, but even then what are we laughing at? The absurdity of the army engaging in psychic warfare? The possibility that Clooney’s insane?  You never quite know what you’re supposed to be laughing at other than Clooney. The man clearly has the nutty-yet-still-cool act down pat,  commanding the screen both in the present-day and flashback sequences, and as long as the film sticks with the hapless duo it just about works. In the third act however, when Clooney and McGregor bump into the former’s old comrades in Iraq, the film pretty much falls apart as it descends into a farce entirely different in tone to the rest of the film. It’s a horribly jarring shift, which undermines the entire film, despite nice turns by Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey (both of whom are woefully underused). Perhaps Ronson’s book could never have adequately been adapted for the big screen, but equally this film needed to know what it was trying to be in its past and present, yet screenwriter Peter Straughan constantly hedges his bets.

Straughan never quite knows when to be serious and when to play for laughs, and it leaves The Men Who Stare at Goats a disappointing and sometimes dull effort. A film with more conviction about its source material, and less of a last-minute determination to laugh at itself might have been quite impressive. But all the laughs are in the wrong places, leaving you wondering why an A-lister like Clooney should have bothered attaching himself to the project.

6.5/10

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