Men Who Stare at Goats (**1/2)

Many people now know of the US Army’s secret experiments with LSD, CIA testing of “brainwashing” techniques, or even the military’s use of a Chinese manual designed to elicit false confessions as a basis for its “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Yet they may not know about its attempts to train recruits in the art of “remote viewing,” by which which they could, supposedly, use only the power of their minds to see faraway things, or even, as the title suggests, to kill goats.

Playing a reporter who accidentally stumbles upon this story, Ewan McGregor is the audience surrogate for learning about this odd use of taxpayer funds. The reporter is called Bob Wilton, presumably based on Jon Ronson, who wrote the book on which the movie is based. Little in this movie suggests that “Bob” is capable of writing a book, but the early scene in which he interviews one of the participants in these experiments has just the right tone of curious incredulity that’s called for. Cut to a few years later, and cuckolded Bob has fled to Iraq to convince himself and his soon-to-be ex of his manhood. From this point at which Bob coincidentally wanders into former operative Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), the narrative gets goofier and less convincing. Clooney himself does a pretty good job as one who has managed to get by in life by fervently believing in his own special abilities in the absence of any proof.

This comedy follows in the steps of movies like Charlie Wilson’s War or The Informant! in finding the absurdity in a serious, true story. Of course, in this case the absurdity is right on the surface, and probably the movie would have done well to underplay it a little rather than make almost every scene seem like a lark and every character a kook. The film briefly resembles Ishtar as Bob and Lyn go wandering in the desert on a mission that’s not entirely clear, but provides an excuse for buddy-comedy mishaps. Flashbacks are supposed to provide the backstory on all of the paranormal military stuff, but mostly bring in an assortment of odd characters, most notably the unlikely miliary man/new-age guru played by Jeff Bridges, a cousin to his Big Lebowski character.

It’s all sort of amusing, but never as funny as you might think, or even as informative as those other movies manage to be at the same time as being funny. As Bob goes from skeptic to sort-of believer in these strange folks, it seems as if we are supposed to both laugh at and celebrate them in their bizarre efforts to make war through peaceful means. But you don’t have to have read Ronson’s book to know that the movie has taken too many narrative shortcuts and left out too much for the movie to come off as anything but quirky fluff.

IMDB link

viewed 11/18/09 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 11/19/09 and 11/23/09