Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats

A film of two halves 'The Men Who Stare at Goats' starts slow and eventually picks up pace thanks to the use of some clever flashbacks. The first 20 minutes or so establishes Ewan McGregor as the lead - a cuckolded journalist who journeys out to Iraq to try and find some action and ends up finding Clooney's Lyn Cassidy a psychic spy on a mission. Clooney plays the part quite deadpan but it is in the story of the jedis that we get the real laughs.

This is thanks to the performance of the film from Jeff Bridges as Bill the leader of the group that trained Cassidy. Bridges is basically playing a version of The Dude character from The Big Lebowski but is damn entertaining and has much better screen chemistry with Clooney than McGregor does. As the villain of the piece, Kevin Spacey is given little to do which is a problem given his stature as an actor.

Although this film is often funny thanks to Clooney and Bridges. The chemistry between McGregor and Clooney isn't present which is a big problem as they are meant to be the lead duo of the film. Given its 84 minute runtime it is surprising that this film is still quite slow and dips in the middle where Ewan and George are lost in the desert. Although the final ending is quite uplifting it doesn't stop most of the film from being ultimately disappointing given the stature of the four lead actors.