Staring Contest

The Men who Stare at Goats

After his wife leaves him, journalist Bob Wilton hightails it to Iraq for a story and to prove to his ex wife that he is a man. There he meets Lyn Cassady, a man who claims to be a recently reactivated psychic spy. Together they head into Iraq where Lynn explains to Bob the military's secret psychic spy program from the Cold War.

This is an interesting movie... It's hilarious, well executed, great characters and acting, and becoming poignant when needed. It's just a shame with all those qualities it still feels lacking. Now I enjoyed this film immensely, and suggest anyone a fan of dark quirky comedies to see it, but there's just something missing from this film. Something that just doesn't draw you in as deeply as other films.

This film seems to swap from dark comedy to drama without any real flow, the themes of the film don't match very well in that regard. In one seen you have this oddness of a soldier hopped up on LSD in attempts to prove his psychic powers running through the camp naked firing wildly, the next shot he shoots himself in the head. Dark comedies can be dramatic, but in this film the shift from one theme to the next seems stiff, and comes without warning.

This all compounds with the psychic abilities themselves. Half the time the whole idea of psychic powers seems silly and easily explained, all nonsense in the context of the film and only real in the flashbacks. Then another time they appear as real, with no logical explanation to have. The movie doesn't seem to want to decide if the Lynn character is a real psychic or if he's just a con man that believes his own con...

But with all that said, the film is still worth watching. It's a funny and odd dark comedy, if you can handle the mood shifts you will enjoy it immensely. The way Clooney and McGregor play off eachother, a timid young reporter and an old psychic supersoldier... Clooney completely taken by his own story and McGregor going along for the sake of his story, it's great.

This film is definitely for those who enjoy the ludicrous and dark comedies, it may be worth buying, but you wouldn't be wasting money to rent it first to see if it's for you.