Movie Reviews by Marcy K - Naples Florida
"MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS'
RATED R
93 MIN.
A MOVIE REVIEW by FILM CRITIC MARCY KRUCHTEN
This film could best be relabeled, women who stare at men who stare at goats, namely George Clooney and Jeff Bridges. Is there any other reason to see this film? Well, maybe one, the first third of the film is quite hilarious. But trying to be somewhat of a quirky dark comedy, reminiscent of the Cohen Brothers, barely succeeds in its obscurity.
Goats dropping dead, while men stare at them, with supposed psychic powers, is just what we were hoping to see. This film dropped dead before all of the goats did.
The main plot of the movie goes something, in a convoluted way, like this. Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), a journalist, after being jilted by his wife, does what every red blooded American man does when this happens, he goes to war. He winds up in Kuwait, waiting for some war action, when he meets up with Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) a left over hippie army psychic, who is on a top secret mission to find his former army instructor Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) in the Iraqi dessert.
While traveling in the dessert, Cassady explains how he got involved in the US Army 1st Earth Battalion and what his paranormal military program training, under former wounded Viet Nam vet turned flower power warrior monk, Django, taught him to do.
As they are traveling, Cassady demonstrates such so called psychic powers as; staring at clouds until they burst apart, the choke me technique, the sparkly eyes technique. He also tells about his training in the US Army, in flashbacks. These include such new age concepts as the attack bee technique, the death touch, running thru walls after staring at them, seeing into the future, locating Noriega thru Angela Lansbury and of course, the all popular staring at goats until they drop dead technique. He also demonstrates how a weapon, called The Predator, can hurt you in 100 ways. This demonstration is one of the funniest segments of the movie.
When they are captured by Iraqi dissidents, Cassady tries to demonstrate to Wilton, how true Jedi warrior psychic spies fight with their minds, not with guns.
At the beginning of the film, the movie is prefaced with the quote "More of this is true than you'd believe". It is truly amazing to see how tax payers money, for the last three decades, has been spent on bizarre secret experiments into psychic combat by the US military. Army personnel practicing paranormal skills, the training of warrior monks that see into the future to fight enemies seems absurd, except, this movie is based on non fiction bestseller Jon Ronson's true script.
Even with the star power of Clooney, Bridges, McEwan and Spacey, they still gave us reason to stare off into space while they drank LSD and stared at goats. The plot was interesting at first, but after too much wandering in the dessert, our minds wandered as we wondered what and where the story was going. The film gets credit for some very funny moments, but after a while we just wanted The Silence of the Goats.
*** stars out of ten
|