The Men Who Stare at Goats Movie Review

“More of this is true than you would believe,” serves as the opening tease for the wild comedy, “The Men Who Stare at Goats” which takes audience into a ride through the powers of the mind. Based on the nonfiction book by British journalist Jon Ronson, Peter Straughan extracts Ronson’s researches on a section of the U.S. military dedicated to mental combat for his screenplay. This anti-army comedy features the team-up of George Clooney and director Grant Heslov as they spoof the U.S. army’s psychic phenomenon.

The story begins with American newspaper reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) who hears from a local about the tale of the unit of the U.S. army called the “psychic warriors”. In attempts to indulge more on the precious information, he signs on to cover the Iraq war set in 2003. While staying at a Kuwaiti hotel, he stumbles upon Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) claiming to be one of the Jedi warriors, the select Army team of warrior monks who rely on paranormal powers.

Travelling back to 1972 Vietnam, Bill Django (Bridges) founder of the New Earth Army discovers in his experiments Cassady’s extraordinary gift of ESP. With their psychic powers, the special unit is capable of astral-projecting, reading minds, walking through walls, and even staring at goats until they drop dead. However envy rises among them in the form of Larry Hooper (Spacey), who takes over after kicking out Django.  Returning to real time, both Bob and Lyn set out for a special mission, to search for Django who has gone missing.

With the action events happening in different timelines, director Heslov constantly shifts from present to past. Though there are moments he prefer to linger on the early days, it was to provide viewers with the psychic action the film had promised. Despite this bounce and the number of narrators, the film maintains its cohesiveness with its smooth story-telling style. Credits also go to Robert Elswit for his magnificent wide-screen filming of New Mexico’s deserts and Puerto Rico to stand for Iraq and Vietnam respectively which is enhanced by Tatiana S. Riegels’s topnotch editing.

The only fallback for the film is how it loses its steam as it nears the end making it look like filmmakers had difficulty figuring out how to end the film. However, it’s perfect if you seek a comedy that would expose to you an unseen and unexpected side of the military injected with paranormal powers.