The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)
Directed by Grant Heslov
No — The Men Who Stare at Goats is not woke, scoring 12 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
A 2009 satirical black comedy about Army officers who believe they can walk through walls and stop a goat's heart with a stare, drawn loosely from Jon Ronson's book of the same name.
Consciousness Markers
The villainous private research firm PSIC and the mercenary security contractors carry a mild satirical jab at the military-industrial complex and profiteering, but it is incidental to the comedy rather than a sustained eat-the-rich argument.
The cast is overwhelmingly white and male, with Waleed Zuaiter's Iraqi hostage Mahmud Daash and Rebecca Mader's Debora Wilton as the only notable non-white and female presences, neither of which is framed as a representation statement.
The film is a satire that mocks military credulity and New Age mysticism through comedy rather than preaching; its anti-war sentiment is delivered as farce, not sermon.
The Iraq War setting and the Iraqi character Mahmud Daash provide incidental Middle Eastern presence, but the film has no racial-consciousness thesis and treats the war as absurdist backdrop rather than a racial critique.
The film fictionalizes real Cold War-era Army psychic programs (the First Earth Battalion, Jim Channon), but it is a satirical farce rather than a modern reframing of history through a progressive lens.
The film is a boys' club of psychic soldiers; the only female figures are a hallucinated Viet Cong soldier offering a platitude and a wife who leaves the protagonist. No feminist framework is present.
No LGBTQ+ characters, themes, or subtext appear anywhere in the film.
No environmental or climate themes appear in the film.
No body-positivity themes or messaging are present.
No neurodivergence themes or characters are present.
Why it received this score
A 2009 satirical black comedy about Army officers who believe they can walk through walls and stop a goat's heart with a stare, drawn loosely from Jon Ronson's book of the same name. Grant Heslov directs four movie stars through the desert, and the result is a shaggy, amiable ramble that treats the military and its contractors as a punchline instead of a thesis. The instinct here is to mock credulity, not to instruct anyone.
The cast is a wall of famous white men. Waleed Zuaiter's Mahmud Daash exists as a hostage and little more, and Rebecca Mader's Debora Wilton walks out on the protagonist in the opening minutes. No same-sex material appears. No environmental concern surfaces. No body politics, no neurodivergent framing, no feminist architecture. The single faint social note comes from PSIC, a private research firm running cruel experiments for profit, and from the mercenary contractors who shoot at one another in the desert. That is a jab at profiteering, tossed off between gags, not a sustained argument about capital. The Iraq setting supplies incidental Middle Eastern faces, but the war functions as absurdist wallpaper.
As cultural messaging the film is close to inert, which is not a complaint. Its satire aims at New Age mysticism and military gullibility, and it delivers that satire as farce. The end titles cheerfully disclaim any lesson. A closing gag about Barney and Friends suggests the filmmakers understood exactly how little of a serious story survives contact with the media. A reasonable evening's entertainment. As a vehicle for progressive instruction, it is a goat that will not fall over.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
A reporter in Iraq might just have the story of a lifetime when he meets Lyn Cassady, a guy who claims to be a former member of the U.S. Army's New Earth Army, a unit that employs paranormal powers in their missions.
Questions about The Men Who Stare at Goats
Is The Men Who Stare at Goats woke?
No — The Men Who Stare at Goats is not woke, scoring 12 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does The Men Who Stare at Goats have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Eat the Rich at 25.
How does The Men Who Stare at Goats compare to other 2009 movies?
It ranks #91 of the 230 films from 2009 we've scored; their average is 14. The wokest is Home (79).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.