THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS

It holds the promise of unfettered screwball silliness. The film does deliver on that promise but only in the most obvious ways. Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) is a small-town reporter desperate to prove himself after the collapse of his marriage. He heads for Iraq where he meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), veteran of a hush-hush army programme.

Cassady claims to have been a Jedi warrior taught to harness the power of his mind by Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), a hippie devoted to “alternative combat tactics”. Jedi warriors should be able to run through walls, tell the future and incapacitate a goat merely by the concentrated power of a gimlet stare.

A line at the beginning of the film claims that “more of this is true than you might think” and as Bob and Lyn stumble through the desert in search of a plot the film delivers a laidback, slightly underwhelming farce on the madness of the military.

VERDICT  3/5

(Cert 15; 95 mins)