Some stories are fake yet seem real. Some stories are real yet seem fake. And then there are stories that are supposed to be real but make you think “Are you kidding me?” That might be the case here with the film THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS. If nothing else you’ve got to love the title.
Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) is an Ann Arbor newspaper man whose wife just dumped him for the paper’s editor. Wanting to prove to himself and her that he’s more than she realized, he volunteers to go to Iraq to report on the war and become, in essence, a man.
But it isn’t what it’s cracked up to be as he waits for an opportunity to even enter the country. A chance meeting in a restaurant with a man he had heard of named Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) changes his life forever. Before coming to Iraq Bob had interviewed a man who claimed to have psychic abilities that he was taught by the U.S. military. And Lyn was the man he said was the best of the best.
When Bob refers back to this interview while talking to Lyn, he is put off at first. But a drawing made in his notebook that resembles a tattoo on Lyn’s chest makes Lyn believe that the two of them have been led to one another via destiny.
And so the pair head to Iraq the next day, Bob in search of a story and Lyn to fulfill a secret mission he eventually shares with Bob. While en route, Lyn shares the story of the special ops group that was founded to use psychic abilities as well as other subversive techniques.
The story begins with a solider named Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) who returns from Vietnam questioning why soldiers performed the way they did under fire. Given a grant and a paycheck from Uncle Sam, Bill went in search of alternative methods of gathering information. Lets just say he checked out every new age fad he could find in seventies California.
From this gathering of information Bill puts together a group he calls the New Earth Army. Unorthodox doesn’t quite sum up this group of soldiers who parade around with long hair and flowers among other things. And the top student Bill finds among these men is Lyn Cassady.
Bill is attempting to create a super soldier; a soldier that will not have to kill unless he must, but who can use mind control to take out the enemy. Bill calls these men his Jedi warriors.
As to staring at goats in the film’s title, it refers to a time when Lyn was required to stare at a goat using his psychic abilities to kill the goat. He accomplishes this, the goat’s heart stops and Lyn is a changed man.
Back to Iraq, Bob and Lyn run into bandits, trigger happy security teams and an assortment of semi-whacky individuals while on the mission Lyn began. It isn’t until later that Bob discovers the mission is to find Bill.
So this movie sounds quirky and yet serious at the same time, yes? Well in a way it is. The situations involved do take on some serious moments (like when a IED/bomb blows up the car Bob and Lyn are traveling in), but at the same time almost all of the moments in this film are laced with a subtle black comedy that gives it it’s charm.
The actors involved do a wonderful job combining a bit of naiveté, suspicion, eagerness to learn and more. McGregor and Clooney become an interesting couple that play off of each other’s character well. And Bridges takes on the role of hippy mind expansion proponent far too easily.
According to a short featurette in the specials on this disc, we are given information from retired officers that there was indeed a psychic special forces group that was looking into psychic abilities and other off the wall ways to form warriors. Who knows what the end results were?
No comments:
Post a Comment