First-Rate Actors Can't Save a Muddled Plot

Rating: 4/10 (12 April 2010)

I had read and enjoyed Jon Ronson's book that was the basis for this film. That book was an expose of the U.S. Army's attempt to develop the capacity to view faraway things by extrasensory perception and to kill merely with mental energy and to pass through solid objects as a ghost would. That the Army was doing those things had a kind of political point-- the commander-in-chief at that time was regularly consulting an astrologer. What was comic about the situation was that the people doing this work were deluded and foolish. Their officers and administrators were deluded, foolish and had more money for their work than they prudently knew what to do with. But you can't make a feature film where practically everyone on screen is a deluded fool, they have to have something noble about them. Which nobility the stars of this movie have. But their beliefs have to be vindicated, at least a little, at least symbolically. In the end, the movie is unsatisfying, because what those guys believed is ridiculous. An army that thinks that it might be able to do remote viewing, etc., is not serious. This film is an entertainment, a comedy. It may well be intended to give people relief from their deadly serious lives. Still, after the movie, I was concerned that the makers of the movie were not serious about serious things: evasions of reality with or without drugs. Ewan McGregor is miscast-- hard for me to accept him as a nebbish.