The Men Who Stare at Goats

Completing my recent disappointing films of Ewan McGregor festival. This is about the Army's allegedly true adventures with New Age mysticism and telekinetic powers. More accurately it's about a talky reporter, McGregor, covering the history of the group as he joins one of it's veterans, George Clooney, on a nebulous "mission" in the opening days of the current Iraq war. McGregor's narration is pervasive, banal and oppressive. It dominates the film, leaving little room for the story to unfold without it being literally explained to us. His journey and even the connection to the present day story seemed unimportant to the film. Any magic in this picture is contained in the flashbacks to the origins of this program. Those scenes are George Clooney, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey using their considerable talent to overcome this over-written mess. The humor is off throughout, but in those moments it shines through. As a midwester aw-shucks kid, McGregor seems completley miscast. He's too old, too handsome and too British. His accent doesn't really hold water. It seemed like the only reason he was cast was because of the films many references to the "Jedi" (the program's own name for it's soldiers). I thought the first of these winks to the camera was a little funny, but repeated exposure beat that out of me. The final act finds Spacey running a 2.0 version of the program with a braindead Daniels and washed out Clooney crashing the party. This is where the film suddenly dives into issues like Guantanmo type torture and American renditioning. It's an abrupt turn from the earlier attempted lightness of the movie. It's an interesting premised, gone horribly awry. I did think Spacey, Clooney and Daniels were all fun to watch, however.