Rated: 4 out of Five Quickies
I saw this film on a Thursday night in Chicago with a very small audience of no more than 25 young people and at the end of the film- we all actually clapped. I don’t really need to say much more than that in this quickie review because I have never seen spontaneous applause occur in a movie theatre before except on opening nights.
“The Men Who Stare at Goats” is a very funny, somewhat psychedelic road movie that explores a variety of paranormal and psychological techniques and events that were, unfortunately, adapted by our government to be applied to war. I especially liked the way the film illustrated the use of LSD back in the sixties.
LSD when properly formulated and carefully applied has a variety of positive psychological and consciousness expanding effects. When LSD was legal, actor Cary Grant was one of a small group of celebrities who openly utilized LSD under his psychiatrist’s supervision to repair psychological damage in his own life. In one scene the film shows that a soldier who is given LSD and then traumatized by his commander loses his mind and opens fire on his mates, but at the end of the film when LSD is given in an open, natural environment it brings out the peaceful, loving and compassionate responses in soldiers already desensitized by violence.
George Clooney and Jeff Bridges had the standout performances.
I took off one “Quickie Star” for scenes that reduce the hippy movement and various Psychic and Gestalt techniques of the sixties to buffoonery, but other than that this was a highly intelligent, entertaining and complex film with a solid message about peace and the psychological sickness of war. Well worth seeing.
