The Men Who Stare At Goats

This is a story about a reporter (Ewan McGregor) who interviews who he thinks is a crazy person (played by Stephen Root) who talks about being trained by the military to stare down animals and ultimately kill them with their minds. Some sort of telepathic soldiers. The reporter doesn’t believe him (at first), but sadly, the reporter’s wife leaves the report for his editor and in a desperate move, the reporter sends himself to Iraq. He tells his x-wife he’s joined the military, but he’s on his own dime.

The reporter runs into Skip, played by George Clooney, at a restaurant and they strike up a conversation. Skip was in the army with Stephen Root and also trained in psychic warfare. He gave the background on how the pentagon funded this insane program. The army was attempting to create “warrior monks” who can pass through walls and see into the future. Jeff Bridges plays the soldier who wrote the instruction manual on psychic warfare. Clooney takes the reporter into Iraq with him so he can write a story on the Army’s program.

Skip and McGregor get captured on the way, during a conversation in which Skip spouts off all crazy-style. While in custody, some fire-fights break out and they escape and eventually get rescued by the Americans over there. The pair commandeers a car and drive into the dessert to continue their journey. There’s continual backlog to get you caught up to where we are at currently in the dessert. There was a “goat lab” in the basement of one of the military buildings – this was where they learned to kill goats with their minds.

When they crash their car again, they are rescued by the Americans that set up the psychic warriors operation and things start go get weird on the reporter. Not just weird, plain ridiculous. This is where I totally lost interest in the movie. It doesn’t wrap up nicely, it just gets frustratingly stupid.

The movie is slightly entertaining, but it’s so unrealistic that you just can’t buy what they’re trying to sell to the viewer. It’s difficult to follow for this reason and I’m thinking this is why the movie didn’t make a big splash, despite having a bunch of top-notch actors in it. Sad reality, but if the story line had been less “off the deep end” it would be a lot easier to believe…