The return of the Jedi
Mind control, psychic powers and raw journalism invade Iraq
By Erik Hayden 11/12/2009
The Men Who
Stare At Goats
Directed by Grant Heslov
Starring: George Clooney,
Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey
Rated R for language, some drug content and brief nudity.
Sometimes a story is so outlandish that it has to be true.
In Vietnam, officer Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) fell out of a helicopter while it was hovering above a grassy loading zone. Dazed, he awoke to find that all soldiers under his command had safely landed and were now crouched and staring at the misty jungle ahead. A shot rang out and the young soldiers winced. One Viet Cong soldier began to flee, Django called to open fire, his soldiers obeyed, but all rounds missed high above the head of the enemy. None of the fresh soldiers, it seemed, had intended to pull the trigger for the kill. Django momentarily contemplated this insight before, ironically, being struck in the chest by enemy fire and promptly blacking out.
While unconscious, he experienced a vision with a message to seek peaceful methods for troops, to harness mysticism, optimism, psychic powers and psychedelic drugs and to create a new military soldier — the Jedi warrior (yes, the George Lucas variety). Thus the New Earth Army, Django’s top-secret psychic U.S. military operations team, was born.
That, at least, is the story that Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) tells journalist Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) when they meet by chance in Kuwait City during the initial invasion of Iraq in spring 2003. The psychic operations team is now defunct due to one too many trippy mishaps, but Django has one more mission for Cassady in Iraq. He would need to follow his instincts to achieve the goal.
Sure, this all seems more than crazy to a fledgling journalist — Cassady seems to think he’s one of these Jedi who can kill a goat through sheer mind power — but at this point Wilton will take any lead and run with it. Hoping to get a decent story out of the adventure, he accompanies Cassady as the burned-out psychic soldier attempts to cross the border to Iraq and “remote views” (psychically views) his way to the mission.
The series of events that follow could be ripped from any buddy comedy road-trip formula — their car runs out of gas in the middle of the desert, they get kidnapped by intimidating “terrorists,” they discover an evil psychic operations base in Iraq. Indeed, even though the movie takes place in a war zone, its mishaps and tone feel ripped straight out of something like The Hangover.
This is due in large measure to the endearing qualities of its lead actors, Clooney and McGregor, who are clearly having fun arguing and bantering on and off the camera. But unlike many George Clooney movies (Syriana, Michael Clayton) Men Who Stare at Goats doesn’t preach at its audience or get bogged down with pretentious aims — it simply tells a splashy and unbelievable military tale. (You’ll be compelled to Google the facts after the movie.)
A deft script holds the whole enterprise together and incorporates the modern landscape of war-torn Iraq into the film as few other Hollywood movies have been able to do. It is, perhaps, the first Iraq war movie that has the luxury of truly looking at the conflict in hindsight.
Despite its serious subject material, the movie is a mostly breezy ride. I never thought I’d find myself laughing at the detonation of an I.E.D. (improvised explosive device) or sighing in frustration as gunfire breaks out between two bumbling and paranoid Blackwater-style security details who believe the other company started the fight.
Perhaps inadvertently, Director Grant Heslov seems to have crafted a small-scale Apocalypse Now for a new generation — a comical, bizarre wasteland that almost feels like a fantasy, but contains just enough reality to be biting and emotionally resonant.
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