Film Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats (Spoilers)
They said it would be too similar to ‘Burn After Reading’ for comfort, but they were wrong. This adaptation of Jon Ronson’s book isn’t anywhere near as comic as it’s been marketed as, then again it doesn’t quite work as a deliberately fudged, semi-documentary piece either. That it should entertain anyway and still be funny is entirely down to the boundless charisma of George Clooney, whose presence more than makes up for the script inadequacies and directorial misfires. Ewan McGregor plays Ronson analogue Bob Wilton – a small-town reporter eager to get to grips with his life after his wife leaves him. He decides to go to post-war Iraq, and whilst in Kuwait bumps into Lyn Cassady (Clooney), whom he knew by reputation after covering a kooky paranormal story for the local news some time earlier. Cassady is US Army and on a mission to Iraq, and Wilton hitches a ride with him, only to find out upon entering the warzone just how unconventional Cassady is. Clooney’s character is revealed to be at the core of the clandestine New Earth Army, a genuine covert operation where the armed forces explored developing psychic solutions to take on the Soviets. Is the programme continuing in Iraq?
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
