This movie has an all star cast that includes George Clooney, Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges and one of my favorite character actors, Stephen Root. It was released November, 2009.
I’m not big on going to movies for various reasons, but the trailers for this movie tempted. What I expected to see, based on the trailers, was a good belly laughing comedy. While there were a few laughs to be had it was mostly a trite drama.
Basic premise of the movie is a down and out reporter goes to Iraq to prove himself. Though various “coincidences” he runs into members of a defunct Army unit that had explored paranormal warfare. I can buy our government doing this after all they dissected aliens at Area 51.
Somehow, even with this all star cast, I did not buy the general story. The bit where Jeff Bridges goes off to find himself seemed like a recycled, bad, early 70s hippie movie. The part was too stereotyped to be believable. I was probably hoping for “The Dude” goes military.
And while we are on stereotypes, Kevin Spacey, plays the villain. The part was painted in finger pants using the palm of the hand. I generally feel a movie villain should not be totally despicable. Spacey was.
Clooney gave a reasonable performance, not great, but probably the most believable of the three.
Stephen Root, as Gus, was great. He has the ability to play a role so well that sometimes you do not even know it is him. I had to look at the credits to see which part he played.
Not to give away the big climax, but again I did not buy that. Again it seem like part of a recycled hippie movie. And folks just do not act like they did in the movie under the influence of this particular substance.
The movie was entertaining enough to stay, and I did not squirm too much. Even with the all star cast it just did not deliver. It certainly did not live up to the advertising trailers.
The movie was not all bad. It was however, not worth the price of a movie ticket. I wish I had waited until it came out on cable.
I saw it as an allegory of the loss of the American dream to the powers of the military industrial complex and that no matter how improbable if we try to get back there, we can maybe walk through walls, or at least feel better about ourselves culturally. But not worth the price of admission.