The Men Who Stare at Goats

The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009) is a military comedy by Grant Heslov that you can watch online on iFILM. Reporter Bob Wilton heads to Iraq chasing a career-making story and instead falls in with a man who swears he can drop a goat dead with nothing but a hard stare.

That oddball is Lyn Cassady, played by George Clooney. He claims to be a veteran of a secret Army unit that trained soldiers to walk through walls, read minds and win wars without firing a shot. Ewan McGregor's reporter trails him across the desert, never sure whether any of it is real or one long prank. As they drive, the unit's strange history surfaces: its hippie founder Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) and his jealous rival Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey).

The script grew out of British journalist Jon Ronson's nonfiction book about the Pentagon's actual experiments with psychic warfare. Heslov and Clooney produced the film together, turning that absurd true material into a dry, deadpan jab at military thinking. Stream The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009) online on iFILM.