In Contention

Tag: Grant Heslov

  • SHORT TAKE: “The Men Who Stare at Goats” (***)

    George Clooney and Ewan McGregor in The Men Who Stare at Goats

    Venice Film Festival

    A trim, lively comedy powered by a winning quartet of personality performances and an endearingly naff drive-time rock soundtrack, Grant Heslov’s helming debut “The Men Who Stare at Goats” doesn’t make too many demands of its audience. In return, we shouldn’t make too many demands of the film.

    Anyone looking for a skewering satire of U.S. military practice might come away disappointed, even as the film opens with the cute semi-disclaimer, “More of this is true than you might imagine.”

    Based on British journalist-humorist Jon Ronson’s book of the same title, which investigated the development of outlandish psychological warfare techniques in the U.S. army and their application in the Iraq war, Heslov’s film (from a script by Peter Straughan) jettisons most of Ronson’s dark gallows humor in favor of a sunnier, sillier sort of absurdity.

    Not much has been retained but the idea of crazy psychic soldiers with telekinetic powers (the title is to be taken literally), but given the indifference of film audiences to anything remotely Iraq-related, you can hardly blame the “Goats” team for playing down the political currency of their source material.

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  • Overture gets Clooney’s ‘Goats’

    George ClooneyThis strikes me as quite a coup for Overture Films, the young indie outfit that recently made their presence felt with a hard-won Oscar nod for “The Visitor.” In the biggest Cannes acquisition so far, Overture has nabbed the U.S. rights to Grant Heslov’s “Men Who Stare at Goats.”

    The film, a political satire from Heslov and George Clooney’s production company Smokehouse, stars Clooney as a military forces agent who possesses the secret to paranormal war tactics. Ewan McGregor co-stars as a journalist who becomes inveigled into the discovery, while Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges round out the powerhouse cast. It’s certainly a lofty-sounding title for the little studio. Good for them.

    Meanwhile, the Clooney updates are coming thick and fast. The actor, who it seems can put nary a foot wrong these days, has just signed on to headline Focus Features’ “A Very Private Gentleman,” an adaptation of Martin Booth’s well-regarded novel about an assassin whose plans for a simple final assignment in a rural Italian village are complicated by a series of personal engagements.

    Which is all well and good, but what’s really interesting about the project is that it is being helmed by Anton Corbijn, the music-video master whose debut feature, “Control,” was one of 2007’s finest. This is a very different proposition for the filmmaker, and I’m looking forward to seeing how he applies his trademark atmospherics to thriller territory.