Long movie, the early days of the CIA. Matt Damon shines.

Rating: Null/10 (3 May 2007)

This is one of those movies that is very hard to summarize. It moves backwards and forwards between the 1930s and the 1960s, with the "present day" focus being the botched Bay of Pigs invasion into Cuba. Someone "inside" must have tipped off the Cuban rebels and throughout the movie we see the main characters trying to unravel the mystery, gathering clues from a grainy photo of a room somewhere in the world, and a partially obscured sound track of a tape with a female voice in a slight French accent.
Matt Damon is the main character as Edward Bell Wilson, apparently a composite of real early CIA operatives. A humble college poetry student who, because of his intelligence and his careful demeanor, virtually gets sucked into a world he never imagined joining. He is superb in the role. His wife is played by Angelina Jolie as "Clover" (Margaret) Ann Russell.
Other key characters are Alec Baldwin as Sam Murach and Billy Crudup as Brit Arch Cummings. Robert De Niro, who directed, also has a role as General Bill Sullivan. Michael Gambon is poetry professor Dr. Fredericks. William Hurt is Philip Allen. Timothy Hutton is Edward's father, Thomas Wilson.
Some might call the movie "slow". It certainly has very little action, but there is good character development. A very good movie about an interesting and important time.
MAJOR SPOILER. DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE. When all the clues are put together near the end of the movie, it was Edward's own son who had unwittingly alerted the Cuban rebels. He had overheard a conversation at home, and had repeated part of it to a woman he had fallen in love with. She, of course, was a spy and was snuffed, pushed out of an airplane as she was flying to their wedding. In he end Edward decided to leave the CIA and begin to live his own life.