The Men Who Stare at Goats

Therumors that circulated during the Cold War of secret psychic warfare projectsare the basis for The Men WhoStare at Goats. An often-broad comedyspoofing everything from men’s movement nostrums to ecological good sense, andanything with a whiff of hippie idealism or New Age mysticism, Men Who Stare is often funny if dubiousin some of its social implications. A trio of stars who look like they’rehaving a grand time in their roles, George Clooney, Jeff Bridges and KevinSpacey, considerably elevates the film.

Noneof them happens to play the film’s hapless protagonist. That duty falls to EwanMcGregor as Bob Wilton, a ne’er do well Michigan journalist whose wife justabandoned him for his one-armed editor (don’t ask, there’s not much to tell).Weak and easily put upon, Bob embarks on a fool’s errand to Iraq during the2003 invasion. Too inconsequential to be embedded with the troops, Bob sits outthe opening of the war at a hotel in Kuwait where he meets Cassady (Clooney), aspecial operations veteran who claims he was part of Operation Jedi, aReagan-era secret military project to train soldiers in “remote viewing” andother paranormal skills.

Clooneyplays the part with the matter of fact earnestness of the truly insane as herecountswhile bumping across the Iraqi desert on one misadventure afteranotherthe effort to elevate soldiers into warrior monks for the New Earth.The idea belonged to Django (Bridges), a pony-tailed Vietnam vet who embracedall things countercultural, from hot tubs to alternative healing to NativeAmerican sun dances. Undermining his wacky if benign schemecynicallyunderwritten by a few Pentagon officials to close the “psychic gap” with theSovietsis the Darth Vader of Operation Jedi, Hooper, depicted by unctuous,feline arrogance by Spacey.

Iraqprovides The Men Who Stare at Goatswith its sharpest field of satire, especially aimed at bullet-headedcontractors who shoot at each other instead of the enemy, buzzard-like Texansseeking to privatize the country for their own gain, and the outsourcing of warrepresented by Spacey’s new psychological warfare firm, Psyc, which hasrestarted Operation Jedi but “without all the hippie crap.”

Muchof the movie’s humor comes from misguided pursuit of meaning down a path intothe blind alley of delusion. Yet in the end, the “hippie crap” begins to looklike an admirable alternative to the cold, dollar-driven ways of Hooper and hisilk.

The Men Who Stare at Goats opens Nov. 6 at theOriental Theatre.