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The Men Who Stare at Goats
George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey and at least one goat star in the satirical war film "The Men Who Stare at Goats," which opens this weekend in local theaters.Courtesy
By MICHAEL SMITH World Scene Writer
Published: 11/6/2009 2:19 AM
Last Modified: 11/8/2009 4:00 AM
Lyn Cassady can do amazing things with his mind. He has a psychic gift. But is there a military application for the skills of a man who can stop the heart of a goat?
All with the power of his mind. And a bit of liquor. And listening to classic rock. Usually Boston's first album.
Based on Jon Ronson's nonfiction book about the U.S. employing psychics to explore military uses for mental powers, "The Men Who Stare at Goats" is a smart, wacky truth-based satire with a great cast led by George Clooney, who makes it safe for adults to return to the multiplex.
He brilliantly portrays Cassady, incorporating ridiculous humor and touching grace to create a kind of warrior monk. The work reminds how comfortable the suave leading man is with farce, and how secure he is in his own skin when he doesn't play pretty boy. But he does get to dance here, and it's a don't-miss moment.
The superb work of Clooney, Jeff Bridges and Ewan McGregor is important in a film with a perfectly quirky first half set-up that eventually slumbers toward an anticlimactic conclusion. "Goats" doesn't approach the gold standard of "M*A*S*H" or "Dr. Strangelove" for wartime satire, but when this movie is funny, it's hilarious.
Ronson's book offers so much you-can't-make-this-stuff-up material that it immediately engages. "More of this is true than you would believe," the film opens.
The conscience of the film is newspaper reporter Bob Wilton (McGregor), a meek fellow whose wife leaves him. With his life in shambles,
the fraidy-cat rashly overcompensates by going to Iraq to cover the U.S. invasion in 2003.
He stumbles upon Cassady, an operative for an odd top-secret military unit using paranormal powers for peace. The participants in the program describe themselves as Jedi knights.
Cassady reveals hard-to-believe insights into the group's mind-tricks. But again, Wilton is disillusioned (like many Americans looking back on six years of war) and seeking something positive in which to place his faith.
In Cassady — as directed by Clooney producing partner Grant Heslov — Wilton has found a true believer in war through peace. And he knows a good news story when he hears one.
The irony of Clooney describing "Jedi warrior" tactics to McGregor (an Obi-Wan Kenobi portrayer in "Star Wars" films) is but one of several smart in-jokes, most aimed at U.S. military might.
"It's OK, we're Americans, we're here to help you," Cassady yells from a truck to an Iraqi on the run in the desert, who Cassady then accidentally runs over.
Much of the humor has background visuals and are a hoot, like Bridges' unit leader expanding his reality through naked hot-tubbing and "beyond jogging" (it looks a lot like skipping) to form the unit's New Age ideals. Bridges' pony-tailed stoner looks a great deal like his character in "The Big Lebowski," perhaps intentionally.
The tranquil aims of New Earth Army soldiers with superpowers (use your mind to be all that you can be, the film proposes) are perverted by those in power when they're not being derided. The bite of the "Goats" satire comes not in ridiculing the exploration of such applications, but in theorizing that they weren't taken far enough or seriously enough.
The film posits: Isn't it time to think outside the box for wartime solutions, whether that be in Iraq or some other far corner of the world?
While "The Men Who Stare at Goats" pulls up a little lame in an attempt to provide a meaningful moral, the satire succeeds in showing, as Elvis Costello might say, what's so funny about peace, love and understanding.
The Men Who Stare at Goats
Stars: George Clooney, Ewan McGregor,
Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey
Theaters: AMC Southroads 20, Cinemark
Tulsa, Starworld 20, RiverWalk,
Owasso
Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes
Rated: R (language, some drug content,
brief nudity)
Quality:  (on a scale of zero to four
stars)
Michael Smith 581-8479
michael.smith@tulsaworld.com
By MICHAEL SMITH World Scene Writer
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