"Find out what your destiny is, and the river will carry you."

Rating: 8/10 (18 September 2018)

In the tradition of all your best Catch 22's, this film's major thrust is to illustrate the absurd by being absurd. It does a pretty good job of it too, offering all kinds of circular reasoning and almost coherent sounding psycho-babble. Riffing on concepts laid out in "Star Wars", the military takes an interest in using psychic powers to take out the enemy, and forms a super soldier unit to develop the Jedi like potential certain individuals seem to possess. Clooney is hilarious in the story, at his best demonstrating the myriad capabilities of an object that looks like a can opener, but having a hundred uses, each of which can incapacitate an enemy - "It has warrior capacities, and it looks a little bit funny". His character, Lyn 'Skip' Cassady, does it all with a straight face too, at times impressing and at others infuriating reporter Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), who tags along hoping to earn the scoop of the century if they can only figure out where they are.
The film has a fairly formidable cast with Clooney, McGregor, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey, with Bridges in a role that he parlayed into virtually repeat performances as wildly different characters in the same year's "Crazy Heart" (for which he won a Best Actor Oscar), and the following year's "Rooster Cogburn" (where he might have gotten robbed of the same award). That this movie itself wasn't a nominee is understandable, it's not that long and played mostly for grins, and let's face it - staring at goats can only be done for so long before it becomes monotonous. But if you enjoy quirky satire, this fills the bill with it's goofiness and dead pan deliveries by the principals. I'd love to see the outtakes from this picture, the guys making it must have had a blast.