The Men Who Stare At Goats

A contender for film title of the year, but not alas movie of the year. Part of the problem is the wandering tone. Everything from that title to the premise via the trailer lead the audience to expect an outright comedy, or at the very least, a sharp satire about the military. George Clooney does indeed effortlessly slip into his Coen mode and has some very funny scenes, but the equivocal introduction telling us that more of the events are true than we'd expect extends to a more general uncertainty. The structure doesn't help matters. The road trip to Iraq tenuously holds together a string of flashbacks in search of a plot. Nor does the film ever manage to locate an ending - and it tries twice. "Free the goats" doesn't quite cut it as a denouement. Overall one is left with the sense of having sat through an occasionally amusing, rather silly and inconsequential film while wishing that the makers had gone for an out and out satire based on the New Earth Army, which one suspects would have been far more effective.