The men who stare at goats
Film: The men who stare at goats
Director: Grant Heslov
Starring: George Clooney, Jeff Bridges
Runtime: 93 Mins
Rating: **
There’s an interesting sub-genre in American cinema, of which The Men Who Stare at Goats is a good example: the Based-on-a-Journalist’s-True-Story. Spike Jonze’s Adaptation satirises its conception well – when Kaufman tried to adapt The Orchid Thief, the resulting film ended up charting his attempt to adapt The Orchid Thief. David Fincher’s Zodiac shows us how it’s done, meticulously transferring the detail of Robert Graysmith’s book to the screen and compromising as little as possible in the name of tried and tested narrative clichés: if you’re willing to power through the 2 hour 40 minute runtime, the experience is very rewarding.
The Men Who Stare at Goats learns no lessons from these films, with the exception of its casting of big, sexy names: search for Jon Ronson, who wrote its source book, and Graysmith on Google Images, and you’ll see that they look nothing like Ewan McGregor and Jake Gyllenhaal. Like the insignificant film of Fast Food Nation, it turns a probably important investigation into a fictional, knockabout comedy. The story concerns journalist Bob Wilton’s search for a story in present-day Iraq, his meeting with ex-soldier Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) and the discovery of the U.S. army’s secret investment into psychic warfare. A former general-turned-hippy (Jeff Bridges) tried to use New Age concepts from hippy culture to create a unit of ‘Jedi Warriors,’ whose peaceful values and hopefully telekinetic capabilities would bring an end to war.
It’s an incredible story, the implication of the bizarre venture being that the emphasis on the human psyche in combat helped produce horrific modern torture methods. But rather than being an incredible film, or a particularly funny film, it instead won’t stop waving at you, insisting that it’s incredible and funny. A key problem is that a flat road trip that Cassady and Wilton go on is invented to frame this story, and even takes precedence over it. There’s a lot of car crashes, some attempts at odd couple banter, a kidnapping by the first Iraqis they meet (a meeting with a kind, suffering local is a poor attempt at contrasting sympathy) and a few encounters with wacky characters who try and live up to the pseudo-Catch-22 tone that so jars with Ronson’s investigation. It reaches a reunion with the characters of Cassady’s tale and ends with a warm-hearted but unconvincing tribute to the hippy culture they once adored.
Grant Heslov previously wrote the brilliantly simple Good Night, and Good Luck with Clooney at the steering wheel, but here he directs great talent poorly: Kevin Spacey enduring an acid trip and Jeff Bridges re-living the glory of The Dude should be among the greatest moments of the year, but end up as depressing. There are some great moments, in brief flashbacks to combat in Vietnam and a Dr. Strangelove style conversation between two top generals in the height of the Cold War. But it’s an exasperating film: it tries to paint a telling portrait of the U.S. military, but dumbs it down by stressing the good-heartedness of all the figures concerned.
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