Hilarious Look at the Absurdity of War

Rating: 7/10 (19 November 2009)

"I wanted to prove myself and for my sins, fate taught me a lesson," says Ewan McGregor's voice over in THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS, invoking the classic Martin Sheen voice over in APOCALYPSE NOW.
Both films take a look at the absurdity of war but whereas the latter film focuses on war, GOATS focuses squarely on the absurdity. And, boy, does it focus. The main characters focus on a whole slew of things throughout the film, from George Clooney focusing on clouds in an effort to 'burst' them to Stephen Lang, who plays Brigadier General Dean Hopgood, focusing on a wall before attempting to run straight through it! GOATS is a laugh out loud look at supposedly real life events that are almost too bizarre to believe. A reporter, played by Ewan McGregor, who has been brutally dropped by his girlfriend, discovers a top-secret black-ops wing of the US military when he accompanies an enigmatic Special Forces operator, George Clooney, on a mind bending mission in Iraq. Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a shadowy figure, claims to be part of an experimental U.S. military unit, the New Earth Army, a legion of Warrior Monks, or Jedi's, with unparalleled psychic powers that was put together by General Hopgood under the tutelage of Bill Django (Jeff Bridges).
Intrigued by his new acquaintance's far-fetched stories, McGregor impulsively decides to tag along. The pair set off on a mad-cap adventure, eventually tracking Django (Bridges) to a clandestine training camp run by renegade psychic Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey). McGregor becomes trapped in the middle of a grudge match between the forces of Django's New Earth Army and Hooper's personal militia of super soldiers, a match that can only be decided by a liberal dosing of LSD.
THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS was inspired by Jon Ronson's non-fiction bestseller of the same name, and is an eye-opening and hilarious exploration of the government's attempts to harness paranormal abilities.
The jokes and the pop culture references come thick and fast or maybe, fed on a diet of conspiracy theories, I'm just making connections that aren't even there. Django is surely a reference to the classic spaghetti western of the same name while Clooney's Cassady and Lang's Dean Hopgood have got to be a reference to Neil Cassady's Dean Moriarty character in Jack Kerouac's ON THE ROAD.
The funny thing is this – all those old hippy types genuinely thought that a little LSD could change the world, that happiness was available in little tabs. Hell, even Lennon, with his Love In, and his 'Give Peace A Chance' slogan bought into the new cosmic consciousness. So what's to say that the Military didn't buy into it too? And, if they did, then chances are something like this may well have happened.
"More of this is true than you would believe," states the opening epigraph to THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS and fortunately, given the nature of man and the absurdity of war, that's probably the case, which to my mind, at least, makes the movie all the funnier. If the sight of a fully grown man trying to run through a wall is the type of thing that makes you laugh, then GOATS is most definitely for you.
And one thing is for sure, whether this film is true or not, it's hard not to laugh at the petty squabbling that is at the root of most arguments and, by extension, most wars. It doesn't take much to see that the problems of people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, and it's pretty hard not to laugh at people making a big deal of beans. Or maybe I just dropped one too many tabs. Either way I loved the movie.