Very keenly surprised/apprised

Rating: 8/10 (19 March 2015)

'What do you people have?'
'The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.'
--Best dialog of the movie! I liked this film more than the average reviewer for the simple reason that, as a history buff, I was at least acquainted with a good deal of the lore of those times and the CIA (JFK & Bay of Pigs, post-war Germany, even CIA drug use for interrogation purposes). And this really is rather essential to a fuller enjoyment of the movie, as I suspect why there was a good deal of ambivalence for it from others.
De Niro did a credible job directing, but it was obviously assumed that viewers would have more knowledge of those times than most people probably do, due to the fact that the film did have a tendency to skim over some of the events and minutiae that likely could have used further elucidation. Of course, at well over 2-hours in length, this would not have been practical.
The cast was great... with one exception. Damon did a convincing job of playing a soulless bureaucrat, I'll take that any day. While, the one exception, was Angelina Jolie- who I feel was miscast in her role as Damon's estranged wife. She typically is miscast in anything outside of flash and dash type of flix. But that's a somewhat off-topic matter.