Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
11/20/09
No matter what end of the
political spectrum you're on, we can all agree on this much: the
government is up to something. All manner of secret deals and projects
go on with our tax dollars outside of the public eye; some of them evil,
some corrupt, and many just stupid and weird. Jon Ronson's 2004 book
The
Men Who Stare at Goats was concerned with a stupid, weird military
project that morphed into an evil one, and Grant Heslov's new film version
uses it as a solid metaphor for our national loss of innocence post-9/11.
Fashioned by screenwriter Peter Straughan as an entertaining Iraq War road
movie, Goats sports one of those delightfully overcranked
comic performances only George Clooney can give, and is generally filled
with crazy and bizarre incidents, an alarming number of which appear to
be true.
Journalist Bob Wilton (Ewan
McGregor) lives a droning life of quiet desperation. When his wife
(Rebecca Mader) decides to seize the day by leaving him for another man,
he also decides to make a big change and head for Iraq to cover the war
there. A chance encounter with contractor Lyn Cassady (George Clooney)
reminds him of an interview he did for the paper years before, when Gus
Lacey (Stephen Root) declared himself a former member of a special military
unit capable of psychic visions and killing animals with their thoughts.
Pressed by Bob, Lyn reveals himself to possess superpowers, none of which
he can actually demonstrate. But he's a force of absolute confidence,
and Bob proposes riding along to do a story. The self-proclaimed
“Jedi Warrior” hesitates at first, but sees Bob doodling a hidden tattoo
of Lyn's and decides he's a kindred spirit. As the two of them ride
through the Iraqi desert, Lyn tells him the tale of the First Earth Battalion,
an Army unit founded by Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) to put into action the
techniques he'd learned in years drifting through the counterculture after
the Vietnam War. The FEB's “Jedis” should be able to walk through
walls, see the secrets of foreign governments over great distances, becoming
invisible, and, uh, enter enemy countries carrying symbolic animals and
bring peace by staring at the combatants with their “sparkly eyes”.
Lyn proved to be a gifted telepath and found his calling as a Jedi.
But as he and Bob fight their way through kidnappers and trigger-happy
contractors, he tells of the arrival of a snake in their garden:
Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), who had no gifts as a Superhero, but endless
skill as a backstabbing bureaucrat. Now, years after the fall of
the First Earth Battalion, Lyn will meet Larry and Bill again under entirely
different circumstances, when in the service of their government, the former
Jedis have turned to the Dark Side.
Although these characters
are fictional creations, the First Earth Battalion was very real, as were
their experiments in Remote Viewing, invisibility, walking through walls
and, yes, killing goats by staring at them. Not that anyone actually
walked through any walls (Stephen Lang is a hoot as a General who is known
to bounce off them in the attempt) or turned invisible (Lyn explains that
it's really more a matter of “not being seen”). Django's real-life
counterpart also wanted to try that bit with the symbolic animals and the
sparkly eyes, but if it worked, it must have remained classified.
The thing The Men Who Stare at Goats does so well is disarm us of
our desire to stand back and mock the FEB's efforts because, well, who
wouldn't wanna have superpowers and end war by spreading positive vibes
throughout the world? Beats the hell out of torturing detainees with
strobe lights and the Barney theme, as the cruel Larry Hooper is happy
to do. Whether the real-life First Earthers called themselves Jedi
or not is in dispute, but it works beautifully for the movie because there's
something about George Lucas' hooey sci-fi religion that hits our desire
to wield awesome powers in the name of peace right where it lives.
And, of course, it doesn't hurt that Dick Chaney himself declared that
the War on Terror would be fought on the Dark Side.
For all its' silliness, The
Men Who Stare at Goats is really a nostalgic pining for that possibly
imaginary time in the past “when we knew right from wrong”. The First
Earth Battalion might have been a crazy idea, but it came from a good place,
and Clooney does a sensational job making it seem like a great and magical
thing no matter how much the evidence pleads to the contrary. What
Heslov and Straughan are saying is that, over the last couple decades,
a nation driven by a belief in the possibility that we could be and do
better has become one driven by a belief that we must settle for whatever
gets the job done no matter the cost. Gone from a nation of Lyn Cassadys
to one of Larry Hoopers. And it is a resonant idea as far as it goes,
which is to about the ¾ mark, when the filmmakers tip their tie-died
hand a little too forcefully and indulge a climax where the only thing
missing is someone singing that they'll be there to take my hand and share
my land. Is there seriously anyone who believes you could dose an
army base with LSD and everyone would just lie around laughing and not
one of the gun-toting soldiers would hurt someone? If Field of
Dreams' James Earl Jones had showed up to spray insecticide on the
proceedings and demand they return to the 60's where they belong, he'd
have had my sympathy.
But until coming a wee bit
unglued at the end, The Men Who Stare at Goats is a delightful tale
of a quixotic would-be superhero and the many different kinds of delusion
that make up a war effort. Clooney is at the top of his game, both
channeling the hilarious levels of demented stress he usually reserves
for his work with the Coen Brothers and making the fallen Jedi a genuinely
sympathetic figure. We never learn how much even he believes in his
“powers”, but what Clooney sells us so wonderfully is his belief in the
idea of them. McGregor, a fun casting cross-reference since he played
Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas' Star Wars prequels,
excels at characters who're just a little bit pathetic, and Bob is so sad
as the movie opens that his wife has left him for a man whose only discernable
character trait is a prosthetic arm (getting his ass kicked by a man with
a hook hand makes for a pretty funny sight gag). Bridges is a hoot
as a man whose force of personality is almost the equal of his crazy ideas,
and Spacey delivers his usual solid officious odiousness. Lang, Root
and Robert Patrick as a contractor drunk with the potential of a consumer
Iraq, are all hoots in small roles.
The Men Who Stare at Goats
has a lot of fun with ideas that could have been played far darker, but
Heslov shows a great light touch for comedy in his directorial debut.
There's also a palpable level of sadness floating underneath the laughs
that could have made the movie truly great were it just a tad less naïve
at its' heart. Even so, it's unquestionably the funniest movie made
about the war in Iraq and one of Clooney's best showcases ever. And
it's filled with fun facts about generating your own psychic powers, information
you should know since it was paid for with your tax dollars. |
