The Men Who Stare at Goats had a lot of potential. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. It introduced many great ideas and concepts about the power of the mind and positive thinking, but didn’t really go anywhere from there. Set in the 1980s, The Men Who Stare at Goats, stars Scottish actor, Ewan McGregor, who plays Bob Wilton, a lowly journalist from Ann Arbor, Michigan whose wife leaves him for his editor/boss. Heartbroken, he decides to seek out adventure and goes to Kuwait, waiting to cross the border into Iraq to cover Operation Iraqi Freedom. With his personal life in shambles, Wilton figures that he can go to Iraq and write some Pulitzer Prize-winning story, which will ultimately win back the love of his life. Wilton has no idea, however, how his life is about to change when he meets up with a character named Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), who claims to be a recently re-activated member of the U.S. Army’s New Earth Battalion, a unit that trained its soldiers to use psychic/paranormal powers on their missions. Cassady tells him, “I’m a Jedi.” They don’t fight with their hands, but with their mind.   

Together, Wilton and Cassady trek through the desert to Iraq. Along the way, amidst some hilarious mishaps, Cassady recounts the history of the classified military program where we are introduced to off-the-wall characters like Lieutenant Colonel Bill Django (Jeff Bridges who wears a pony tail at times and a  long braid down his back at other times), the zany founder of the program and the man in charge of training the soldiers with New Age methods and techniques. We also meet Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey) who is a psychic soldier and Lyn’s former nemesis. Even with a dark hairpiece, Spacey looked quite old to be playing the part of a young army guy.  

However, the actors are all great. That’s not the problem. The problem is that the movie doesn’t really go anywhere. It gets boring midway through and I almost fell asleep. At the end, we are left with a lot of questions. I think it is supposed to be a comedy and I did find myself laughing quite a few times. George Clooney wears a mustache and with his salt and pepper hair, he honestly looks like a lot like Dennis Farina.  The movie is an antiwar “satire” and had much more potential than it ever achieved. Mostly, it just made the guys look like idiots.

Probably the most unbelievable thing about this movie is the fact that it is based on a true story. It seems a bit crazy, doesn’t it? I find it hard to believe, but you never know. Goats is based on the nonfiction book of the same title, written by England’s Jon Ronson. According to him, it is completely true. The movie even starts with a footnote that “More of this story is true than you would believe.” If that is the case, then somewhere in America in the 1980’s a U.S. soldier killed a goat with his mind.

Peter Straughan wrote the screenplay for The Men Who Stare at Goats and it was directed by British writer and documentary filmmaker, Grant Heslov (he also worked with Clooney as a producer on Leatherheads and co-wrote the excellent Good Night, and Good Luck, but in this movie, he could have used some help. Heslov weaves a tale of a battalion of New Age paranormal soldiers – Jedis –  who were trained, during Vietnam, to don cloaks of invisibility, kill goats with their minds, and generally turn war into a groovy thing. He slaps numerous gags together, but never really finds the “voice” of the movie.  The ending is lame and unsatisfying.  It would be an O.K. DVD rental because the actors are great and there are a few laughs along the way.