Ewan Mcgregor Movie:

Editorial Review:
Hard to define but easy to enjoy, The Men Who Stare at Goats is the preposterous yet more-true-than-not story of a small-town journalist named Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) who, trying to prove himself in Iraq, stumbles upon a man named Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) who claims to be a psychic spy for the U.S. Army. With dazzling cinematic efficiency, the movie bounces back and forth between the origins of the New Earth Army--a squad of American Jedi warriors--and Bob and Lyn wandering through war-torn Iraq, pursuing a mission that turns out to have been assigned by a vision. The movie shifts from giddy comedy to melancholy as a portrait of human pettiness, manifested in military paranoia and corporate greed, unfolds. The ending loses a bit of steam, but most of The Men Who Stare at Goats is a delight--unusual yet satisfying, funny and thoughtful in turns. Jeff Bridges plays--of course--the addled yet charismatic founder of the New Earth Army, while Kevin Spacey plays--of course--the weaselly, manipulative psychic spy who turns what was meant to transform the world for the better into a mechanism for propaganda and worse. Adapted from the bestselling nonfiction book of the same title by British journalist Jon Ronson, The Men Who Stare at Goats niftily balances surface lunacy with serious undercurrents, buoyed by excellent performances from all involved. --Bret Fetzer

The Men Who Stare At Goats [Theatrical Release] Reviews:
High Hopes
2009-11-30 - I had really high hopes for this movie. I love Clooney, Spacey, McGregor and Jeff Bridges. I had heard about 'remote viewing' when watching 'Suspect Zero'. I thought this would be a good movie and probably pretty funny cause I like a lot of what Clooney has done in the past. I must say it was just ok. It just kind of floundered and it is a shame cause with this much talent and such an interesting subject it could have been gold.

Baa baa, said the goat
2009-11-30 - An uneven buddy caper that rides mainly on the abilities of its impeccable casting, "The Men Who Stare At Goats" takes a seriously weird moment in military stupidity and pokes gentle fun at it. There was once a New Earth Army (called The First Earth Battalion) that the CIA experimented with as a Psychic Warfare Operation. What should have you irritated about a waste of your tax dollars gets spoofed into a Hollywood movie. So much for the "liberal media," right?

As such, it's still a good time waster. Milquetoast Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) wants to prove to his ex-wife that he's an exciting man, so he talks his way into an Iraqi reporter position. It is there where he bumbles into the Special Forces Operator, Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), whom Bob once referenced in a story about psychic warfare. Soon Bob convinces Lyn to take him along on his mission, and Lyn's intermittent explanations about the New Earth Army appears in anecdotal bits, often very humorously.

The supporting cast makes up for the slowness of the overall film, with Jeff Bridges leading the pack as Bill Django, the best of the psychic warriors. Stephen Lang steals the show in just a few scenes as somewhat loopy Brigadier General Dean Hopgood. Kevin Spacey is fine as the creepy trouble maker Larry Hooper, but you've seen him do this a million times and his character here has nothing new to offer. And finally, Robert Patrick is a hoot as contractor at large Todd Nixon, appearing for no apparent reason but still amusing.

"The Men Who Stare At Goats" is episodic, and that's its main drag. It never seems to find its footing, and the ending is contrived. The original non-fiction book detailed disturbing and often hilarious interviews with men who would tell journalist Jon Ronson about the real attempts Presidents Reagen and Bush 2 put into creating these regiments. But as the movie sputters into its final act and all Jon/Bob gets out of his reports is either ignored or mocked, its a bit frustrating to watch the movie of his work walk the wire between reality and the farcical so unevenly.

Pointless script, but hilarious
2009-11-19 - As George Clooney and Jeff Bridges, two of my favorites, were in this flick--and a critic compared it with something Stanley Kubrick might have done--I had to go see it.

It starts with an army general, convinced of his supernatural powers, attempts to pass through a wall. The scene itself broke me up.

Then we're introduced to Lyn Cassady (Clooney). He reminded me of what many a Clooney character reminds me of: eccentric! he rambles on about a special military unit dedicated to, in effect, the supernatural. Shortly after, you see another eccentric, Bill Django (Bridges).

One of the reasons Django broke me up is first, one could see how he "developed." He got into a Woodstockesque mode, was contemplating reality in a jaccuzzi, etc. In short, if it weren't for Bridges' role in another of my favorites, "The Big Lebowski," he wouldn't have fit into this film.

I'll be much less long winded in my review here because I don't think the film's "plot" did much for me. It was more like a series of sight gags that broke me up. I found myself laughing frequently, but not at a plot that was brilliantly done, or anything else particularly erudite.

Oh, and another actor whose role in this film I looked forward to was that of Kevin Spacey, who played Larry Hooper. And he didn't let me down either.

In short, if you're looking for a moving experience, something you'll be pondering for hours with your grande latte, this probably isn't the film for you. But if you want to laugh at gags, some of them familar, some of them not, at 60s-esque cliches (with some you may very well be familiar), then you may enjoy it. I certainly did.

And at the end, you may be a little surprised at the lead character's (Bob Wilton/Ewan McGregor) attempt to do what the general attempted at the beginning of the story.

Should have been a documentary
2009-11-17 - When I discovered a movie was being made about The Men Who Stare at Goats I was excited, until I realized it was a comedic work of fiction. Thing is, The Men Who Stare at Goats isn't funny.

Oh, it's darkly humorous as the author, Jon Ronson, attempts to get to the truth while keeping a straight face. But it's not funny, and the conclusion Ronson reaches by the end of the book, after tracking the noble origins of a twisted, sadistic form of psychological warfare, is a punch in the face. So why was it made into a comedy?

Fortunately, comedy is too broad a stroke for the movie. It's actually a gonzo buddy journalism movie, where the actors play everything utterly straight. The humor is in what isn't said.

For example: When Ewan McGregor's journalist character Bob Wilton, he of Obi-Wan fame, asks "What's a Jedi?" nobody so much as snickers. Unfortunately the audience didn't seem to get it either: only my wife and I were laughing.

Wilton is on a mission to prove to his wife that he's more of a man than the one-armed editor who steals her from him. See? One armed men are funny!

Partnering with Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a Special Forces psi-ops soldier, the two travel around Iraq on a mysterious mission. Just about every eccentric Ronson encountered in his book is collapsed into two characters in the film, Cassady and Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), Cassady's mentor.

And that's pretty much where The Men Who Stares at Goats loses its way...literally, as the two characters repeatedly get lost in the desert. Eventually, they end up at a secret base where more than just goat staring takes place.

The film is faithful to its source in surprising ways, from the Today show broadcast of Barney music used in torturing prisoners to a picture-for-picture reproduction of the First Earth Battalion manual (here titled the New Earth Army). The problem is that following Ronson/Wilton's journey to its logical conclusion should end with court marshals, public outrage, and an official inquiry. The strength and weakness of The Men Who Stare at Goats is that it unflinchingly deals with this problem...it's just that the solution is patently ridiculous. The film drives right off the cliff into a wish fulfillment fantasy that saps the strength of the rest of the movie.

The film ends with a sucker punch (SPOILER). Wilton publishes the truth, and instead of outrage, the world just laughs. The moral is that mass media turned the awful true story into a comedy...just like a comedic buddy movie did to a certain book you might have read.

Too bleak to be funny, too lighthearted to be serious, The Men Who Stares at Goats ends up as a hot mess of hippy idealism smashed together with modern conspiracy. It should have been a documentary.


3.5 stars. Amusing, but very uneven. Clooney is hilarious.
2009-11-16 - While not a great or meaningful movie in any way (although I suspect some of the folks involved thought it would be), THE M EN WHO STARE AT GOATS is a hoot, fueled by George Clooney's ready-to-be-patented, Coen Brothers inspired lunacy.

Constructed in a needlessly hodge-podge fashion, we follow the journey of the somewhat whimpy journalist who stumbles upon a crazy-enough-to-maybe-be-true story (Ewan McGregor). McGregor has more or less assigned himself to a middle-east beat, because he wants to prove to his estranged wife that he's an exciting man. Unfortunately, he is actually quite a coward, and when he latches on to a story that takes him into Iraq, his need to follow the story is nearly outweighed at every turn by his great fear of being killed.

The story he follows is embodied by Clooney, a mad but compelling figure who has played a part, for decades, in the US government's secret program to develop psychic powers in soldiers. This program was proposed, sometime during the Vietnam era, by Jeff Bridges, a soldier who was allowed to "infiltrate" hippie culture in search of some new approach to war. He comes back with the idea of using psychic powers to affect "peaceful" outcomes in conflicts. He isn't against war, per se...he's against the idea of war needing to actually KILL anything. Clooney is an early recruit to the program, and he shows a great deal of promise. Later, he meets his match in the only other person with psychic powers to rival his, Kevin Spacey...a soldier who seethes with loathing for his fellow man, particularly the cowardly bunch who run this project. He believes that the powers can be used to stop the hearts (literally) of the enemy. Naturally, the government sees more value in this, and the program Bridges has crafted becomes corrupted, and Bridges is disgraced.

Decades later, McGregor follows Clooney on a voyage through Iraq, as Clooney believes he has been "called" to Iraq to journey to an as yet unknown location for an unknown purpose. McGregor sees just enough to believe that Clooney just might be for real...but he also sees enough to really worry that he is just following a dangerous nutcase.

The movie is breezy and off-kilter. Clooney has done some of his wackiest work for the Coen Brothers (particularly in O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU and the recent BURN AFTER READING). He brings that level of goofy energy to MEN WHO STARE, and the level to which you will enjoy this film is probably going to be determined to a large degree by how much you like seeing Clooney do this particular shtick. I happen to enjoy it...not only is it self-effacing (which I always like to see in mega-stars) but it allows Clooney to let out the mischievousness that always seems to bubble just below his surface...and to suffuse it with a touch of melancholy. These aren't GREAT performances, per se...but to me, they are fun.

Bridges gives us much the same attitude he used in his classic role as The Dude in BIG LEBOWSKI (another Coen Brothers film), but at least his character here has a bit more ambition. Spacey is merely adequate in his underwritten, generic role...although he does have one funny bit when he inadvertently ingests some LSD (although I always think the depiction of other people's drug-trips is less amusing for the viewer than for the actor). McGregor, despite a barely passable American accent, is an amusing foil for Clooney...and the scruff of unshaven beard his sports makes him seem more rugged than he has in years. I keep thinking that there is still the perfect film role for this actor...one that gives him full freedom to show off his talents (TRAINSPOTTING)...but also garners wide public notice.

Director Grant Heslov, a Clooney friend and a fairly inexperienced director, does the film no favors. The pacing needs to be brisk throughout, but it goes from breezy to leaden almost from scene to scene. Some bits simply are allowed to go on just a beat or two too long. And in the final scenes, when the film wants to be poignant and perhaps wants to make some statement about war or at least, our current wars...it just sort of fizzles out. As with many comedies, all the best bits are early on. I believe in some ways, Heslov and Clooney may have been trying to create something like a 2nd Gulf War version of THREE KINGS, but that magnificent feature that followed the 1st Gulf War was a singularly brilliant piece of filmmaking that crackled with true creativity in every frame. THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS is a fun, uneven but ultimately worthwhile trifle in comparison.

(As a New Mexico resident, I'd also like to point out that the movie was filmed in large part in New Mexico, particularly at White Sands National Monument. Therefore, the scenery is a cut above average!)