Not as good as I was expecting...

The main attraction of this film for me was the cast! Well, I obviously knew that this wasn't going to be a tradition ultimate laugh-out-loud comedy so was going into The Men Who Stare At Goats with an open mind. I am afraid to say that it was a pretty chaotic film that would confuse its audiences. However, there were some moments of chuckles but none at all where you would laugh your head off. I would hardly call The Men Who Stare At Goats a war film as it has been called. There are scenes that feature platoons; drill sergeants etc but the story didn't really make it like a war film. In fact, I would say that this is one of the very rare films that doesn't really have one specific genre.


The story follows a broken-hearted journalist (McGregor) who goes on the job to Iraq to prove to his ex-wife he isn't weak or frail. There, he meets Lyn Cassidy (Clooney) who is a "psychic" soldier for the US government, trained by his hippie instructor Billy (Bridges) to use his mind, peace and love to overcome hairy military situations. The story is the two men's adventure together. The main attraction of this film for me was the cast! Out of the four Hollywood actors, I would say that George Clooney was the best despite all four did pretty well. Despite it has nothing to do with the acting or characters, I could not help but notice how much Kevin Spacey and George Clooney really look like each other especially when they're both in the army.


I mean, there were moments that made me keep thinking whether Grant Heslov was entirely sure what kind of film he was making. I mean, I would say that The Men Who Stare At Goats is a slight miss-fire towards reaching the level of Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. Now as far as the script, I think that it bites the bullet at trying to make a Coen-like screenplay but fails at it.


Overall, The Men Who Stared At Goats is a film that I would say is about average seeing as the acting was really good but story was an absolute chaos! It was like it got lost with what it was trying to show. I do think that there could have been a lot more to have been done to make it a lot better.

6/10