By Andrew Hope-Hall

The Men Who Stare At Goats is a warm comedy loosely based on a non-fiction book (by the same name) written by Jon Ronson.

Directed by Acadamy Award nominated Grant Heslov (Good Night and Good Luck) this is a happily crazy film which roller coasts from one scene to another almost as if in one of the LSD inspired fantasies played out in the final scene.

The story concerns a reporter - Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) - whose wife leaves him for his one-armed newspaper editor. Bob decides the way to get his career back on track and to impress his ex-wife is to travel to the war zone in Iraq.

There he runs into Lyn Cassady - superbly played by George Clooney - who is a reactivated member of a Psychic Battalion of ‘Warrior Monks’ initially formed after the Vietnam War by Major Bill Django (Jeff Bridges - excellent choice). Django whose life-changing experience in Vietnam spent six years in a hippy commune researching new ways to win wars.

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Then comes the villain of the peace - Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey - again a brilliant choice) who joins the battalion but whose presence destroys the unit. Twenty years later his operations in Iraq leads him to reconvene the main players along with the new ‘warrior monk‘ Bob Wilton.

The story unfolds in real time in Iraq, alongside a narrative and hilarious scenes from the historic formation of the unit.

When one sees actors visibly enjoying acting out their roles you know you are onto something good.

The backdrop of the Iraq occupation lends a wonderful blend of unreality to this film which is 15 rated by the British Board of Film Classification due in part to the comic reference to drugs as well as a certain amount of swearing.

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