“What's with the quotation fingers? It's like saying I'm only capable of ironic attacking or something.”

With such a heavily weighted cast, and what seems to be a high production film, I have learned over my film watching experience that those two entities don’t always equal the equivalent of a good film. In this case, they most certainly do not.

So 20% of the jokes in the film were direct towards Ewan McGregor and using the word ‘Jedi’ and him acting all confused. Haha! HAHAHAHA! I get it guys; he was a Jedi in Star Wars. I get it. Then, the rest was just a complete mess of George Clooney looking like an idiot while they gallivanted around in Iraq…

"It's the Silence of the Goats!" - Bob Wilton

This reminds me of a lesser Coen Brothers film. You've got Jeff Bridges at his most mellow, George Clooney at his most mental and quite a bit of casual weirdness thrown into the mix. But it's not. It's from the producer of Argo and the writer of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; two pretty serious thrillers. It's a wonder how this has come from this dream-team.

Acting-wise, it's just fine for this particular story. As I mentioned before, Clooney and Bridges are in full-blown Coen-mode, and Ewan McGregor is nicely exasperated as the tag-along. Kevin Spacey is basically an extended cameo, but when these three manage to steal the show, that's good…

The Men Who Stare at Goats has obscure cult potential. Many years (maybe decades) from now, I could see this film finding a niche fanbase who will marvel at the stars, quirks and real-world conflicts through the wistful separation of time.

On release, I found the very idea of this film immediately repellent, oozing the sort of cautionary irritations not dissimilar to some other period Clooney misfires drowning in the self-defeating vat of A-list names. When you couple that with some clearly pedestrian film conception and execution (although Heslov seems more competent the closer he gets to the actors), questionable wit, and the surely divisive various threads of self parody, you have a film which is almost certainly set to…