Blu-Ray Review: Satire in ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’ Falls Painfully Flat

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CHICAGO – What a disappointment. You’d think with a cast this great and a premise this outlandish that this film simply couldn’t lose. And yet, the best things about “The Men Who Stare at Goats” are its title, its poster and its trailer that gives away nearly all of the biggest laughs. The actual film is a charmless slog that doesn’t take itself nearly as seriously as it should.

Peter Straughan’s unfocused script is not “based on” but “inspired by” British journalist Jon Ronson’s book, which investigated a government-sanctioned program of psychic spies that formed in America during the post-Vietnam funk. In the film, they’re labeled “The New Earth Army,” led by Lt. Col. Django (Jeff Bridges), who observed that most of his soldiers on the battlefield were subconsciously firing above their enemy targets, so as to avoid killing them. This inspired Django to explore various New Age movements in the 70s before attempting to create alternative, peaceful, and psychological methods of waging war. His goal: “We need to be the superpower that has super powers.”

Blu-Ray Rating: 2.5/5.0

Flashbacks of the army’s backstory is jarringly juxtaposed with a purely fictionalized farce set in the early days of the current war, where an Americanized version of Ronson (Ewan McGregor) journeys through Iraq with Special Forces operator Lyn Cassidy (George Clooney). Formerly a member of Django’s army, Cassidy refers to himself as a “Jedi warrior,” and takes the befuddled journalist on his mysterious new mission, while teaching him bizarre skills such as “cloud-bursting” and stopping a goat’s pulse with his mind. None of this is particularly funny or engaging, mostly because director Grant Heslov (Clooney’s “Good Night Good Luck” collaborator), can’t decide how he wants to approach the material.

George Clooney is a friend to goats and prisoners in Grant Heslov’s The Men Who Stare at Goats.
Photo credit: Anchor Bay Entertainment

The film works as neither a “MASH”-like satire, nor an awe-inspiring look at the incredible true-life events it’s attempting to portray. With his wild eyes recycled from “Burn After Reading,” Clooney just seems like a goofball, as does most of his co-stars. Bridges phones in his familiar Dude persona, from his “Lebowski” locks down to his drug-induced whimsicality. In the post-“Star Wars” portion of his career, McGregor has been consistently miscast, and he seems to have been placed in this role simply so he could exclaim, “We need the Jedi!” He recently fared much better as a tormented everyman in “The Ghost Writer,” but here he just seems as hopelessly lost as his character. The filmmakers have erased any shred of poignancy from the material, in favor of simply laughing at the delusional soldiers. From the very opening scene, in which a brigadier general literally tries to pass through a wall, the vast majority of the gags land with a thud.

The Men Who Stare at Goats was released on Blu-Ray and DVD on March 23rd, 2010. Photo credit: Anchor Bay Entertainment

“The Men Who Stare at Goats” is presented in 1080p High Definition (with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio), though some of the film’s darker scenes are difficult to view, regardless of the resolution. The two-disc edition includes a digital copy of the film and is loaded with extras, most of which will motivate viewers to check out the original source material. The terrific yet all-too-brief “Goats Unclassified” featurette includes interviews with several members of the First Earth Battalion, including Lt. Col. Jim Channon (who was the inspiration for Bridges’s character) and Dr. John Alexander (who was a fierce critic of Ronson’s book), as well as remote viewers Ed Dames and Glenn Wheaton. Their belief in “ridding warfare of barbarism” is wonderful in theory, and a feature-length documentary about their escapades would’ve been far more interesting. Clooney, who also served as co-producer of the film, is conspicuously absent from the behind-the-scenes featurette. One of the disc’s few deleted scenes (featuring a disgruntled Kevin Spacey) has a screwball energy largely lacking from the film.

While Heslov’s yawn-worthy audio commentary is preoccupied with technical details, Ronson’s commentary is quite fascinating. The author highlights elements from his book that ended up getting muddled in the film, such as how the battalion wanted to utilize the “kindness and cunning” of the American soldier to their advantage. He says that his book is ultimately about how the torture methods used at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib were “grotesque re-imaginings” of the idealistic work led by visionaries like Channon. Unfortunately, the “visionaries” in Heslov’s film just come across like an army of buffoons.

By MATT FAGERHOLM Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com matt@hollywoodchicago.com