Driftwood.

Rating: 2/10 (5 July 2008)

This is the tale of how a poetry jock at Yale rose to the ultimate power at the CIA, and how that poetry jock had nothing to do with that rise.
Essentially, the entire movie consists of people approaching Matt Damon's character, telling him to do something, and he does it. Join the Skulls? Done. Rat out your fascist professor? Done and done. Be seduced by Angelina Jolie? Sure. Her brother tells you to marry her because you got her pregnant? Sure, why not. Wanna join the OSS? Well, I guess so.
The movie goes on and on like this. My friends and I call this film "Approaching Matt Damon", because people encounter him, tell him to do something and with nary a shrug he does it. If his character hadn't had bungled his way into being the head of the CIA, he would have made a great waiter.
The main problem I had with this film is that I had to explain some major and minor historical facts in order for my friends to understand what the characters were talking about. Excuse me, mister scriptwriter, but that's NOT MY JOB. Some of your history is so esoteric that it could flummox a grad student in twentieth century American history. It's YOUR job to preface these events in your film in order to make it palatable and understandable for a movie-going audience. The thirty-something nurse and engineer I saw the film with are not unintelligent people, they just weren't up on the trivia (yes, TRIVIA) that you assumed they already knew.
And speaking as a history buff and moviegoer, the movie was flat as a week-old soda and as lifeless as the surface of the moon. From the presentation to the plot, from the characters to the delivery, this film is DOA-- dull on arrival.