‘We need to be all that we can be,’ says Ewan McGregor, eyes fixed on the wall across from him while he rises from his desk and dashes through the office, straight through the wall. And you can’t help feeling how true this simple sentence rings - coming from a journalist who seeks and finds an unbelievable war story, but to his disappointment on returning home only a negative and tiny fraction of his findings is broadcasted on TV. This final scene of disillusion mixed with comedy – of course men cannot run through walls or kill goats by staring intensely at them, or can they? – sums up a light-hearted and highly entertaining description of alternative American warfare in Iraq: using the mind as a weapon to achieve peace.

The Men Who Stare at Goats is director Grant Heslov’s second feature and is inspired by the non-fiction bestseller of the same title by UK journalist Jon Ronson. If ever you believed that the men running the US military intelligence were totally whacked, and somehow humane at the same time, here is the comedy to prove it.

Journalist Bob Wilton (McGregor) decides to go to Iraq, to ‘go to war’ like all men do when left by their wives, as he says to show her his worth as a serious journalist in the hope that he will win her back. He stumbles on a story about an experimental American military unit, which dates back to the 1980s. This New Age army was led by a Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), who encouraged training the powers of the mind, long hair, dancing to classic rock music, LSD and flower power. Wilton’s informer is Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) who was a true disciple of Django’s and who is on a mission years later in 2003 to track down Django at his secret Iraqi desert camp. A former clairvoyant and psychic soldier Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey) is the leader of the camp. Sound like boys having fun in the sun?

Clooney, McGregor, Bridges and Spacey make up an amusing, self-referential quartet: Bridges resembles his Big Lebowski self, Spacey is stone-facedly sarcastic, Clooney’s comic timing is well tuned, and the deadpan look on Obi-wan McGregor’s face when Clooney uses Jedi to describe the psychic warriors definitely evokes laughter. Funny too, though it may sound corny, is McGregor’s use of The Silence of the Lambs when clarifying with Clooney the phenomenon of staring at goats till their hearts stop.

Heslov is Clooney’s producing partner; they also collaborated on the Oscar-nominated screenplay for Goodnight, and Good Luck. Both have a good sense of the absurd, and create a breathing hole where pictures of the dark sides of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib have otherwise flooded screens.

 

Forrás: cdhpost

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