Damon a master at portraying coat rack

Rating: 1/10 (25 December 2006)

If you want to save money on an Eric Johnson concert, get a cardboard cutout of him and stand it in your room. Likewise, if you want to save some theater dollars, get a cutout of Matt Damon.
If you like movies where the lead man stands around looking serious and speaks a line or two once every ten minutes while nothing happens around him, "The Good Shepherd" is the film for you.
Everyone whispers. Everyone is serious. And everyone is consistently wrong, which may be the only high point of the film.
Damon is a mirthless, stoic FBI agent in 1961 pedigreed by the Skull-And-Bones Society at Yale University in 1944. Later he is given a position in the CIA after it is officially formed. A few people die who might be spies, and a couple die who are. Matt stares forward, unblinking, being serious and stoic. This statue routine is quite a hit with the ladies (though it doesn't work for me), and it wins him an impromptu bones-jumping by Angelina Jolie. Damon also displays his fine acting skills by walking and wearing clothes...including a derby and birth control glasses. In one scene--which is destined to be an Oscar Clip--Damon is presented nude from the chest up covered in mud and birth control glasses. The director's imagination is astounding.
So save your holiday movie dollars, spend them better on cuticle frames and shinbone polish. If you're a true masochist, wait for the video to see "The Good Shepherd", or, "Why Matthew Doesn't Blink".