The Good Shepherd (Widescreen Edition)
Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie and Robert De Niro star in this powerful thriller about the birth of the CIA. Edward Wilson (Damon) believes in America, and will sacrifice everything he loves to protect it. But as one of the covert founders of the CIA, Edward's youthful idealism is slowly eroded by his growing suspicion of the people around him. Everybody has secrets?but will Edward's destroy him? With an all-star cast including Alec Baldwin, Billy Crudup, William Hurt, Timothy Hutton and John Turturro, it's the gripping story David Ansen of Newsweek hails as "spellbinding."
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
The Good Shepherd (Widescreen Edition) Accessories
 Blood Diamond (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Children of Men (Widescreen Edition)
The Last King of Scotland (Widescreen Edition)
Breach (Widescreen Edition)
Babel
The Pursuit of Happyness (Widescreen Edition)
The Queen
Flags of Our Fathers (Widescreen Edition)
Deja Vu
Shooter (Widescreen Edition)
The Good Shepherd (Widescreen Edition) Reviews
I went into this film with great expectations, considering the cast. You could however, check out a better film like the Dark Knight or listen to a Leona Lewis CD. You will crash and burn in hollywood, once again buddy. I heard he will be directing 2 sequels for the film, all i can say is.don't WASTE YOUR TIME. He needs to stick to acting. Now I know that you may suggest that it may have been only interesting for certain audiences, but we are all avid fans of SPY films and we all know great knowledge of the World Wars, so clearly they did something wrong. So yes, don't waste your money/three hours of your life you could spend with family and friends on this poor poor attempt at entertainment.
Robert De Niro's debut directing effort sucked. Good luck in all your endeavors, Robert, but please don't make any more films, because frankly they are abominations and atrocious reels of film. The film crashed and burned with in the 1st three seconds. Everyone I was watching it with (party of 12) fell asleep at some point. Peace, Love and Happiness to all.
It's entirely possible to do a movie about an unlikable and even bland character that makes him interesting and sympathetic. This isn't to say Matt Damon did not act well because he seems to have turned in a decent, understated performace that was befitting of the role. Seems like it could have been a lot more engaging to me, and no I don't mean more action. The main character is a tool and I don't like him and I don't like his terrible life but that's not why I didn't care too much for this film (of course). In this character study the creation of an even mildly compelling character whose life we take any real interest in was simply not accomplished. The fact that this is a story about a strange man whose life is his work that is also the story of the birth of the CIA lumps it together with a whole slew of movies that affect for the worse my reaction to this espionage, cold war spy drama. THE GOOD SHEPHERD is an odd film.
But it's not clear from either the product description or the reviews if a) there's any director or actor commentaries on the film; b) any making-of featurettes; or c) any documenatries about the real CIA or historical figures, such as James Angleton, upon whom the movie is based. Is that correct. This was an engrossing, if dry, film for those who like Le Carre novels and the Alec Guiness-starred movies based on them. Since there's no mention of any of that in the product description, I assume there's no commentary track or other features.
And I won't tell you the content of the suidice notenot released until near the film's endof you'll have someone put out a contract on me, and I won't blame you. If you have anyone with a short attention span, recommend something else. It came up during a discussion in the film in which Edward stated that he hadn't read it, then later in the film, when Edward, much later in his life, actually did). Alec Baldwin is an FBI agent who also serves as a bit of an adhesive through the script. You get the picture.
(DeNiro does show up a few times, but he doesn't use it as a medium to show off his face). I saw the point of that format in the film but it can be a little disconcerting, a little hard to follow. It went from Edward Wilson's (Damon's) role as a student at Yale, and his induction into Skull and Bones, then to during WWII, then back gto Wilson's childhood when Edward witnessed his father's suicide, then. There was the interaction between Soviet agents and those of the US, the. Enjoy it, though, and let it encourage your reading more about the "intelligence apparatus" and its indiscretions, as well as its alleged successes and failures. The film overall has an interesting story, keeps you on the edge of your seat quite effectively. He was so low key, he almost reminded me of Billy Bob Thornton in "The Man Who Wasn't There," i.e., so different from a role I would expect of him was to border on the uncanny.
Now, one trait of the film that appealed to me was that when I was in Ireland in early 2007, the film had just arrived there and was showing a lot of popularity in Ireland. First, a comment of commendation: Matt Damon played the lead role in this film. While I've seen the film twice so far, I got those two affairs a little mixed up. But it has always intrigued me how popular anti-CIA (or anti-secret in general) stories can be around the world. If that's the case, the film succeeded. And its accuracy or not could be enough to keep discussion groups occupied for a long time. CIA's alleged use of lysergic acid to lose one of their potential assestsmuch of this stuff documented as among the agency's ill-advised tactics.
The characters and themes can be confusing, but they do, alas, drive you to want to watch it again. The acting was I thought excellent. It's pretty long, though. And Damon was so low key that even his wife, portrayed as the sister of another Bonesman whom Damon got pregnant early in the film, complained to him that she didn't even know what he did. Remember that the CIA isn't a terribly popular organization, both because of its indiscretions and myths associated with it, not to mention, I suspect, crimes for which it has been blamed while other US organizations, perhaps the Defense Dept., the Homeland Security people, or others may be more responsible for it. This film did that quite a bit. Now, commenting on my "title." I usually don't do all that well with films that start at one historic point, then bring you thirty years before, then sixty years after.and on and on.
It was never clear to me whether the film was supposed to be a docudrama, a work of complete fiction, or a pseudo-docudrama. There is tension, enough to keep you watching. (The only "adhesive" in the film was the suicide note that his father had left. I got the impression that it's supposed to be the third of those, i.e., a predominantly fictional demonstration of how the agency came about, from well-connected elites with little feel for how the rest of us feel. Part of the film's confusion too came about because of an affair Damon had early in the film, and that which another character was "having," and Damon was investigating. Again, many of the agency bigwigs at least in the film were Yalies, had connection in the UK with graduates of Cambridge, all of them arrogant, cynical, and unable to trust even each other. (I won't give away any details of that investigation lest I give away more than you should know before you see the film).
It is, in other words, a masterpiece. I can only imagine that in this dumbed-down age of limited attention spans, anything that challenges the intellect is regarded as 'uncool'. Some reviewers say that the characters are under-developed, while others say that De Niro has taken on too much. This is utter nonsense. The movie is superb, the casting is superb, the acting is superb, and the story is superb. I honestly do not understand why so many people have given this excellent movie such mediocre reviews.
|
