Men Who Stare At Goats

I missed Men Who Stare At Goats when it was in the cinema so I was pleased when it turned up on TV recently. Unfortunately it also got sent out to us from our DVD rental list at the exact same time, doh!

It's about an experimental US military unit called the "New Earth Army" that trains recruits to be "Jedi warriors". They aim to develop skills such as invisibility, remote viewing (being able to see any place in the world in their mind), phasing (running through walls), and most importantly to be able to stop a goat's heart by staring at it. But as you might expect there isn't much evidence that anyone in the unit developed a single power, they mainly just grew their hair out and acted like a hippy cult until the unit eventually gets disbanded.

The training program initally got approval because the the Russians heard a rumour the Americans were training an army of psychics, then the Americans heard a rumour that the Russians had started their own psychic army in retaliation, so of course the Americans had to start one too. The movie starts with the disclaimer that "More of this is true than you would believe", but I'm not sure that's true because I could believe 100% of it. Just look at the other crazy stuff the US military got up to during The Cold War, and the similarities between the War On Terror and the book 1984.

Anyway the plot of the movie follows Ewan McGregor who plays a broken hearted reporter who goes off to cover the latest Iraq War to impress his wife who left him for his one-armed editor (there seems to be a lot of amputees in independent films lately!). He meets George Clooney's character, a former member of the unit who's been "reactivated", in Kuwait and they travel to Iraq together to start the mission.  However they don't get very far before they crash their car and are held hostage by armed Iraqis.

Rating: 5 out of 10 - No where near as funny as it could have been, especially considering it also had Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges in it, the storyline and characters let the concept down despite George Clooney's best efforts.