Pretty decent movie of CIA history.

Rating: 7/10 (20 January 2007)

I agree with the complaints here to a point on: slowness, lack of action, murky plot lines, over-length. But I also enjoyed the fact that DeNiro tried something different-character sketch, history, multi flashbacks-these certainly were worthy of wading through.
Clearly Damon was Lansdale or Angleton. Clearly Hurt was Dulles. I liked that much, and the obvious nods to the Kennedys etc. as well-pretty good.
The Skull and Bones are the Illuminati cliché is kinda tired, if anything I think they might want to avoid it. All that was left out was the Roswell '47 landing and perhaps something about Nazi artifacts...anyways I digress.
Damon was well-cast as a cypher, ice-man who did his job no matter what. Joli always looks semi-anorexic to me. They also were really TOO old to be playing 20 year olds at the start, and hard to buy into the aging. Jolie and Damon as Mom and Dad just...kinda doesn't ring true, ya know? And that kid of theirs was straight outta 'AI' and looked a lot closer to being Damon's nephew or youngest brother, to be honest. This wasn't the greatest of casting choices there, to be honest.
I liked Deniro as Bill Donovan, Pesci as Trafficante(or whomever), Hutton as Richard Helms. These were pretty identifiable types. The slagging of locusts into the coffee crop-well that could have been Guatamala or Venezuela or lord knows where. They missed an opportunity though-wasn't 'The Belgian Congo'/Leopoldville' where in '61 the CIA knocked off Patrice Lamumba who'd been elected as a marxist? Really nasty deal went on down there. And there's nary a blip about this. What was the kid doing there in the first place? The story telling here got too jumpy-you don't quite know what to make of their doings.
It's worth watching--just see it as a character sketch instead of a real history and you might like it more. Deniro could have trimmed 20 mins off though easily.
***