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Q: Why would men stare at goats in the first place?
A: To get to the other side.
The Men Who Stare at Goats is a black comedy about psychic soldiers.
The men in question are trained in special, New Age war techniques, and work at reading minds and making themselves invisible to better thwart the enemy.
They ask the question, "How could peace and love help win wars?"
When the answers are not forthcoming, they drop acid.
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The Men Who Stare at Goats moves back and forth in time, but begins in Michigan with Ewan McGregor, here playing a reporter. He's heard about a group of soldiers who operated back in the 1980s in a special psychic unit; later, when he winds up in Iraq, he encounters one of these mystery men who called themselves Jedi Warriors.
He meets the famed Lyn Cassidy (George Clooney), and they go off together across Iraq on a sort of chatty road trip.
Cassidy gives the history of his unit, starting with the experiences of Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), their leader.
Django is a Vietnam vet who explores alternative army methods.
He attempts to get his men to practise 'remote viewing', running through walls or stopping the hearts of goats just by staring at them.
He writes a New Earth Army manual, which every one of his soldiers must read.
But it's not all group hugs and spoon-bending fun. As Clooney's character tells his tales of the past, there proves to be a fly in the ointment and his name is Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey).
Hooper is competitive and ambitious, and before long his attitude has spoiled the atmosphere for everyone else in the New Earth army.
The story returns to present time to find Clooney and McGregor's characters searching for Django in Iraq.
You can be sure they find him, and Hooper too, and you can be just as sure that contemporary warfare is sent up in the process.
The Men Who Stare at Goats is an anti-war absurdist comedy with some truly inspired funny bits. Clooney, Bridges and Spacey are at their deadpan best. (You've seen Clooney as this guy in the past -- someone not quite as smart as he thinks he is -- and it's still funny, but Spacey's petulance here is hilarious.)
Still, The Men Who Stare at Goats is not exactly a movie -- more like a series of terrific comic vignettes. It's brisk and witty and the cast makes it all such great entertainment that you could almost overlook the more or less absent story.
The movie is based on Jon Ronson's bestseller about the U.S. government's past attempts to train and use psychic soldiers and harness their paranormal powers to fight American enemies.
No -- seriously.
And the punch line is that Ronson's book is not fiction.
(This film is rated 14-A)