Netflix Minute: The Men Who Stare at Goats

 

Netflix Minute is a weekly feature highlighting a title from Netflix's catalog of instant view films. If you want to spend a night snuggled up with a bag of popcorn and don't want to drive to the video store, this is for you.

Quirkiness is a tricky beast. Directors like the Coen Brothers and Wes Anderson have an uncanny ability to tap into this style and present generally well regarded films as a result. Many others try their best to capture this beast and steer it to their own success, but ultimately fail. It's hard to say where Grant Heslov's The Men Who Stare at Goats ends up between those two extremes, but I can say with a fair amount of certainty that I had fun with his latest flick.

The film tells the story of a group of supernatural soldiers trained in the Army under Bill Django, played by Jeff Bridges. It's told mostly through flashbacks, relayed in concert with the unfolding events between journalist Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) and former Army "Jedi Warrior" Lyn Cassady (George Clooney). The two met in Kuwait when Bob was desperately looking for an interesting story to report on after his wife left him. When he heard Lyn's name, he recalled an interview he held with a man who he then thought was crazy, going on about military experiments with the paranormal.