The Good Shepherd [2006]

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Editorial reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
A complicated movie about the Central Intelligence Agency and its agents, The Good Shepherd isn't your typical spy movie. Though it stars Matt Damon (The Bourne Identity films) and Angelina Jolie (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Lara Croft franchise)--actors with considerable experience in the action-espionage genre--The Good Shepherd requires that they play more subdued and (much less interesting) characters here. The movie focuses on the career or Edward Wilson (Damon), a privileged Yale graduate who goes on to help found the CIA. He is a quiet, serious, and guarded man, even in the most intimate moments with his civilian wife (Jolie, in a role that wastes her talent). Set against a backdrop of real-life events such as the Bay of Pigs, The Good Shepherd is meticulous in creating a realistic timeframe. The film gets a jolt of excitement when Robert DeNiro (in his first directing role since 1993's A Bronx Tale) peppers the screen with appearances by Joe Pesci, Alec Baldwin, and William Hurt. But those moments are too infrequent. At 157 minutes long, the film is crammed with many factual details, but the characters are shortchanged when it comes to development. Viewers have to wonder why anyone, much less someone like Wilson who has everything going for him, would devote his life to a thankless job that brings so little happiness to himself and his family. The Good Shepherd is an ambitious but flawed film. The actors do a formidable job with a well-intentioned but meandering script. However, we meet so many characters and learn so little about each that it's difficult to drum up much empathy for any of them. --Jae-Ha Kim

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-09-04 rating:
As a director, De Niro proves he's still a pretty good actor
Robert DeNiro and Matt Damon were responsible for possibly my biggest disappointment of 2007, The Good Shepherd, which has to be one of the five or six most boring films I have ever seen. When requesting the DVD from a friend for my birthday, I was expecting a complex, dour, all-star conspiracy thriller along the lines of the BBC's classic adaptation of John LeCarre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. What I actually got was a film that was so dull the plot washed over me without leaving one mark on my memory. Pretty boy Damon is totally miscast as an uptight WASP required to age over thirty years during the course of the film, and even worse was Angelina Jolie, who went totally against her `sex bomb' typecasting to portray the neurotic, neglected, sexually famished (!) wife whom cold-fish CIA boss Damon hasn't got any time for. Michael Gambon, William Hurt, and DeNiro himself all had supporting roles, but their performances were so dull and lacking in any kind of relevance, emotional charge, or development that they seemed to drift in and out of the film for no reason and with no consequence; none were bad, of course, they were just boring. A pointless and soporific movie that lasted three hours but felt like six, it also joins the remake of Rollerball and Ang Lee's The Hulk on the very short list of films that have sent me to sleep on a first viewing; unfortunately the other two had the excuse that I watched them in the evening, in a dark cinema and after a long day's work. I first watched The Good Shepherd in my living room on a bright summer afternoon.

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review by: date: 2008-09-03 rating:
Above Average Spy Film; Let Down By Fictionalised History
The CIA's primary role at the time, covert operations in Guatemala, Iran and Cuba are barely explored. De Niro creates a fictional reason for the botched Bay of Pigs invasion and also contrives an allusion to the death of CIA scientist Frank Olson via surreptitious administration of LSD. It would have been preferable if Mr De Niro had stuck to the known facts.

Matt Damon's character is a dour and humourless man. Was the real James Angleton such a dull character? We do know he was later wracked by extreme paranoia, which some assert may have been clinical in nature. Damon can barely bring himself to communicate with his staff in many scenes. One cannot empathise with Damon's character and this is a major failure of the film. Are we meant to appreciate his burdens? He does not help us to do so if that is the intention.

The exploration of the Skull & Bones secrer society adds to the film's multiple threads. However one is left confused as to why CIA's founder, Gen William Donovan, who was not a Bonesman, recruited so many Ivy League oddballs into such an important organisation?

Despite the lead character's many unlikeable traits and amoral behaviour, if you like ponderous shots of men wearing raincoats walking slowly down empty corridors, this film's for you.

If you take one thing away from this film, remember Gen Donovan's quote: "I want the CIA to be American's eyes and ears, not its heart and soul."

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review by: date: 2008-08-25 rating:
The Good Shepherd
'The Good Shepherd' is one of those films that could have offered so much more, and sadly didn't. The cast was good, the direction was good, the story was good and yet nothing seemed to gel and you're left feeling strangely dissatisfied with everything. The story is very slow paced and although I can normally enjoy films of this type, I found this to be quite a laboured affair. Set against the backdrop of WW2 and the bay of pigs fiasco this story has some great historical touches and added some authenticity to the plot-line. I found it very strange how Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie seemed to age very little as the film progressed, especially with Damon looking the same at the start as at the end which is supposed to be 22 years later! At least they gave Jolie bags under her eyes, but that was about it. There were some excellent cameo appearances from the likes of Joe Pesci and the few scenes with De Niro were very good. Overall, if you like espionage type films, but without the thrills and action, then this is the film for you, otherwise you can safely give this a miss and not worry in the slightest.

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review by: skenn1701a date: 2008-06-02 rating:
I spy with my little eye - something beginning with `d' - for dull.
De Niro makes a surprising move here into spy territory - not modern Bourne type stuff (despite the presence of Matt Damon) but more like an American John Le Carre type story, in its understated events and emphasis on character. It's a noble endeavor, at times wonderfully shot - however, it is ultimately too flawed to succeed as entertainment.
The story revolves around the creation of the CIA, seen through the eyes of Edward Wilson (a composite of several real life characters). It plays as a character driven story showing what can make a man choose a life of permanent paranoia and secrecy, and the impact that has on his life. In this way the atmosphere around the time of the new Agency's genesis is portrayed rather than a strict blow by blow account of how it came to be. A superb and committed cast have been gathered, (including a blink and you'll miss it cameo from Joe Pesci), and there is a clear feeling of the proceedings oozing talent, from art direction and photography, through to actors and music.
However, there is something about the pacing that is not quite right - at 160 minutes, we should have some significant moments of drama to drive our interest on, but somehow we are left with a spy story of non-people and non-events... a spy movie without suspense. There's an interesting enough story arc for our main character, and the audience is asked to be intelligent enough to fill in some gaps - but the padding has turned what could have been an atmospheric and informative movie into something bloated and dull. This is no epic or definitive account.
Regular readers of mine will know I am no huge fan of rapid fire MTV style editing a la `Armageddon' and its ilk - but a movie still has to have some drive and entertainment value. That's missing here, despite the core having some very interesting things to say about the disease of loneliness and what it does to a man. Sad to say, no endorsement from me on this one, even though it has moments that really make me want to like it.



review by: date: 2008-05-26 rating:
Boring, rambling and miscast
This film sets itself some ambitious targets and misses just about all of them. It's at least 30 minutes too long; it jumps about confusingly in time and, as others have commented, we find out so little about the characters' motives that it's hard to take much of an interest.

But the biggest problem is Matt Damon, who simply isn't credible as the man he's supposed to be playing. At the start of the film, we see him leaving for work in 1960. As he gets on the bus, we look back at his house and think, "That's a big house for such a young man." Then, later that same day, we see both ends of a phone conversation between Damon and a man of about the same apparent age - 12 - which the other young man concludes by addressing Damon as 'father'. Damon, we are expected to believe, is at this stage of the story aged 41.
Then we flash back to Yale in 1939, and the only this that tells us Damon is now 21 years younger is that that he's swapped his glitzy (almost-)Kennedy-era glasses for something plainer and rounder. In fact, Damon's eyewear is probably the best clue the film offers as to what's going on and how old he's supposed to be. He's reasonably convincing as his younger self, not so in the least as the man he becomes. And, given that the whole 150-minute film has to hang on this flimsy hook, it's inevitable that it all ends up in a crumpled heap on the floor.

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