The Good Shepard Movie Review

Rating: 8/10 (2 January 2011)

Secrets, loyalty, and unending deception define "The Good Shepard" as a masterpiece for a CIA thriller film. Matt Damon gives a truly bone chilling performance through the transformation that his character, Edward Wilson goes through. The film takes audiences from 1939 to 1961, as it's protagonist Edward begins his journey into the mind nerving life of a CIA operative, learning all kinds of secrets, as well the many methods required to expose them, protect them, and quite often manipulate them to his favor. In his college years in Yale, granting him a welcoming membership into the Skull and Bones society, a group made for the grooming of future U.S. leaders, living on loyalty and trust with one another. The deepest secret of his fathers suicide earns him a place in that group, only to go deeper and deeper into a world that challenges both his knowledge of whom he can truly trust, and what he truly expose. The films overall direction focuses on his current life in 1961, as he uncovers a particular secret which centers a dilemma involving both his son and an unidentified woman to be a spy, while still going back to the years when he was beginning in the very formation of the CIA, with the assistance of General Bill Sullivan (Deniro). Viewers will witness and they will focus less at both the historical events revolving around the overall direction of the film, and will see more from the actions of it's lead, and he slowly loses himself more and more in the dark world that is counterintelligence. The drama of this film isn't focused as much as the psychological aspects of its protagonists development into a man many would define as without a soul to carry. Edward, witnesses betrayal, deception, murder, inhumane torture, and penetrating secrets so defying that his personal dramas waiting back home, become the least concerning, but still useful for they also test his humanity as a person with those that he personally loves, aside from the general loyalty to his country. Matt Damon's performance is riveting through his general transformation, from an innocent bright scholar to a man who's loyalty for America shatters his inner peace a person. The film's conclusion proves that, as the CIA apprehends his son's fiancé, on the basis that she is a Soviet spy and no doubt the film's fortified leak to the films earlier display of the bay of Pigs invasion, at Edward Juniors expense. Jr.'s fiancé's death proves to be the very work of Edward's forced hand, despite his denial, and painful decision. Edwards own certainties of his loyalties as an American and a person are settled at the wake of the true intentions of his father's suicide. Having never read the note, his father Thomas (Hutton) left him, the discovery of his betrayal ends with the burning of the note, and his ascension into a much larger wing of the CIA. The film's lack of focus on Edwards drama may seem like a disappointment, however I see them as very unique points that serve as the ultimate tests of his own lost nature as a human being. Even in the times when he was with his family, the secrets that define his job would cloud his behavior as a parent, and furthermore, distance him from his wife Margaret (Jolie) and his son, leaving him without peace through most of the film. Damon's character is not one to go all emotional, or outrageously dramatic, but less expressive out of his inner torment of the years of secrecy, mistrust, and deception he's had to live on, and will continue to live on. Director Robert Deniro demonstrates a truly thrilling, and devastating exploration into the thrilling, but almost self destructive world of the CIA., centering it's focus on a fictional but very precise character that exemplifies the secrecy that defines the nature of the business. IN a world like that, the concepts of trust and emotion are forever eliminated, creating questions of whether or not our country's safety is worth throwing away our humanity, despite the temporary loss.