The Men Who Stare at Goats

When I saw the trailer for The Men Who Stare at Goats, I got pretty excited. A military satire based on a true(ish) story about a secret branch of the army that tried to develop human super powers, staring Jeff Bridges as its baked commander and George Clooney as a wild-eyed true believer? Count me in.

But here’s the problem: The trailer is better than the film. The trailer lays out the storyline and shows some of the film’s best jokes—men trying to rush through walls and drive while blindfolded; George Clooney giving a death stare to a goat; Kevin Spacey expressing his regrets about a couple’s divorce at their wedding—but the movie itself is glib and unfocused. Sad to say, it works better edited down to four minutes.

Ewan McGregor plays Bob Wilton, a recently divorced reporter looking to prove to his ex-wife just how macho he is. He goes to Kuwait where he meets Clooney’s Lyn Cassady who tells him about the First Earth Battalion, a classified military program started in the ’70s that practiced mind control.

“We were Jedi Warriors,” says Lyn.
“What’s a Jedi Warrior?” says Wilton. (How meta.)

Lyn at first says he’s retired, but later claims he’s been reactivated for a top-secret mission. To Iraq they go, where Lyn does things like try to break up cloud formations with the power of his penetrating gaze and disarm hostage takers with his mind. Is Lyn a loon or a gifted psychic? The answer, in short, is both.

The First Earth Battalion, apparently based on a real army program, is a fascinating oxymoron: A non-violent military division that tried, in vain, to be in step with the anti-war times. (Hey, if the whole world is flashing the peace sign, why can’t the military join in?)

In a way, I think I would’ve liked to have seen a whole movie about the unit’s heyday, when Lyn was a rising star, Bridges’ Bill Django was an inspirational guru, and Spacey, who plays Lyn’s rival in the unit, was a jealous Iago-type, seething in the shadows.

Instead, we flashback and forward, watch as Lyn and Wilton get into various scrapes, and eventually get to Lyn’s secret mission—which is pretty silly and, yes, involves goats.

The Men Who Stare at Goats feels like a wasted opportunity—as though they used a notebook filled with clever jottings where a script should’ve been. Someone should’ve seen this coming.