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The Good Shepherd [2006]
![The Good Shepherd [2006]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5136xJHYqYL._SL160_.jpg)
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Editorial
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
Editorial
Synopsis
With The Good Shepherd, Robert De Niro (A Bronx Tale) makes an ambitious return to the director’s chair. A labour of love for Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (Forrest Gump), the film tells an epic, fictionalised account of how the Central Intelligence Agency was born. Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, a reserved young man who graduated from Yale in the late 1930s. His membership in the exclusive Skull and Bones society led him away from poetry and into a relationship with the federal government, who recruited him to help them on several covert operations. Roth’s script alternates between Wilson’s gradual emergence as a genuine government operative in the early 1940s and the infamous Bay of Pigs conflict in the early 1960s. Along the way, he has a sweet romance with a pretty deaf girl (a sparkling Tammy Blanchard) and ends up marrying the woman he makes pregnant (Angelina Jolie) out of a strong sense of duty. Throughout the film, the emergence of a mysterious tape haunts Wilson, who is determined to uncover the truth behind a leak in his secret organisation. Production designer Jeannine Claudia Oppewall (L.A. Confidential, Catch Me if You Can) and costume designer Ann Roth (The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley) faithfully recreate these earlier periods in American history, while the imagery of Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson (J.F.K., The Aviator) casts a warm, stately glow upon De Niro’s assembled cast of luminaries (including Alec Baldwin, Michael Gambon, William Hurt, Billy Crudup, and Joe Pesci). The result is a production that recalls Francis Ford Coppola’'s The Conversation and Steven Spielberg'’s Munich.
The Good Shepherd
Review date: 2008-08-25 Rating: 6 out of 10
'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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Reviews
I spy with my little eye - something beginning with `d' - for dull.
Review date: 2008-06-02 Rating: 4 out of 10
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.
Boring, rambling and miscast
Review date: 2008-05-26 Rating: 4 out of 10
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.
Loss of interest
Review date: 2008-05-09 Rating: 2 out of 10
We settled down for an evening of entertainment - what a disappointment! The film failed to "hook" us and so after 45 minutes gave up and went to bed.
The Good Shepherd
Review date: 2008-03-28 Rating: 2 out of 10
Boring, boring, boring !
I have a lot of patience, but this film really tested it.
It went on for ever, and I kept hoping that something would happen and it would get moving. It never did, it was as dull as dishwater, from the beginning to the end. Ok acting, but just absolutely no plot whatsoever, and it is VERY long. By the end of it, I was about ready to kill myself, and felt angry that it had wasted so many hours of my time.
Those people who wrote positive reviews for this MUST be on the payroll, because this was one severely bad film.
If your sanity matters to you, avoid it like the plague.
Product Details/Specifications
Actor(s):
Alec Baldwin
Robert De Niro
Matt Damon
Angelina Jolie
Joe Pesci
Creators:
Matt Damon (Primary Contributor)
Angelina Jolie (Primary Contributor)
Director(s):
Recording label: Universal Pictures UK
Manufacturer: Universal Pictures UK
EAN: 5050582483901
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: Anamorphic, Dubbed, PAL,
Release date: 2007-06-18
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 160 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2006
Language: Spanish (Subtitled)
Language: Bulgarian (Subtitled)
Language: German (Subtitled)
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: Spanish (Dubbed)
Language: German (Dubbed)