Clooney gets 'Goats'
by Bryan Flatt
Arts | 11/10/09
Posted online at 1:00 AM EST on 11/10/09
The Men Who Stare at Goats has had a lot of hype surrounding it. Since the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, most if not all reviews have been very positive. The excitement surrounding this film was not only viewer-generated but also pushed very hard by the production company, Overture Films. While hype can make a film that much better, in this case it detracted from what turned out to be a pretty good movie. While the film contained humor, superb acting and a memorable story, it just couldn't live up to the level of expectations it set for itself.
The Men Who Stare at Goats follows a journalist named Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) trying to find the story of his lifetime after a series of unfortunate events disrupts the order that kept him happy and satisfied with his simple life in Ann Arbor, Mich. In his despair, he travels to Iraq and meets the man who will give him this big story, Lyn Cassidy (George Clooney), an ex-soldier in the U.S. army's First Earth Battalion -a secret government-funded operation from the '80s that focused on nonwarfare techniques such as invisibility (later refined to "finding a way to not be seen"), the "starry eyes" look (a glossy-eyed puppy dog face), walking through walls and killing goats with your mind. The movement was started by Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) who, after almost dying in the Vietnam War, convinced the U.S. government that new age peaceful tactics could be just as effective as violent warfare. The story of the First Earth Battalion and its crazy techniques are interspersed with the main plotline of Bob following Lyn on a mysterious mission in Iraq and Lyn trying to teach Bob to have faith in the ways of the Jedi Warrior (the self-appointed name of the soldiers). The irony of Ewan McGregor learning to embrace his Jedi spirit (he played Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars Episodes 1-3) adds a nice inside joke. The two plotlines meet up at the end of the film in a very hilarious and satisfying second-to-last scene.
The Men Who Stare at Goats follows a journalist named Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) trying to find the story of his lifetime after a series of unfortunate events disrupts the order that kept him happy and satisfied with his simple life in Ann Arbor, Mich. In his despair, he travels to Iraq and meets the man who will give him this big story, Lyn Cassidy (George Clooney), an ex-soldier in the U.S. army's First Earth Battalion -a secret government-funded operation from the '80s that focused on nonwarfare techniques such as invisibility (later refined to "finding a way to not be seen"), the "starry eyes" look (a glossy-eyed puppy dog face), walking through walls and killing goats with your mind. The movement was started by Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) who, after almost dying in the Vietnam War, convinced the U.S. government that new age peaceful tactics could be just as effective as violent warfare. The story of the First Earth Battalion and its crazy techniques are interspersed with the main plotline of Bob following Lyn on a mysterious mission in Iraq and Lyn trying to teach Bob to have faith in the ways of the Jedi Warrior (the self-appointed name of the soldiers). The irony of Ewan McGregor learning to embrace his Jedi spirit (he played Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars Episodes 1-3) adds a nice inside joke. The two plotlines meet up at the end of the film in a very hilarious and satisfying second-to-last scene.
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Tansi
posted 11/11/09 @ 9:40 AM EST
What is the matter with George Clooney? His movies get worse and
worse, bad script selections. Absolutely one of the worst movies
I have ever seen, really an effort to not walk out. (Continued…)
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