Open to plenty of analysis

Rating: 8/10 (24 April 2007)

Director(and co-star)Robert DeNiro and writer Eric Roth patch together this dry and chilling story of the CIA,as illustrated through the adult life of a fictionalized son of power and privilege,whose sacrifices become as murky and unsavory as the actual world political situation of which he tries to navigate through.
Edward Bell Wilson(Matt Damon,opting to lean this time toward playing a stiff,ambiguous and stoic character for whom his actions spell out MUCH more about him than his words),was all about devotion to something larger than himself. Whether it was his family(particularly his disgraced Wilson-era cabinet father or his separated but very much in mind son),his friends in college,his organization--the legendary "Skull and Bones"--,his job and--particularly in his own mind--his country. As his job takes him from Post WWII--damaged Europe of the late 1940s through the heightened Cold War tensions of the early 1960s,we see Wilson make his deals,uncover spies,thieves,double agents and discover what kind of evil he's wrangled with on his way to becoming the top man in a burgeoning element of the American rise in Global power:namely,counterintelligence.
Damon is about what you'd expect out of the character he's been assigned to limn: an Ivy-league educated,WASPy,pre-baby boomer who is as over-whelmed by the changing world identity as he is knee-deep in the middle of trying to alter and manipulate it. JOhn Turturro is particularly effective and even a little scary as Wilson's chief deputy,a quietly efficient and effective military man who seems to unquestioningly go about doing his job,and solid turns by Oleg Stefan(as Wilson's chief contact and counterpart in the KGB),Billy Crudup(as Wilson's nearly adversarial peer),William Hurt(as the agency mucky-muck who may or may not be on the take),JOe Pesci(as the of Italian-American organized crime,caught pants-down in Castro's nets,Tammy Blanchard(as Wilson's deaf,innocent college sweetheart)and Angelina JOlie(as Wilson's equally blue-blooded wife,who comes to greatly rue the fact that she got swept into her husband's world of quiet deceit). A lot of characters come and go through this world,but as Wilson quietly(And eventually dis-quietingly)goes about his business,they seem to become background to greater goals and missions,sometimes not at all what they seem.
As stated earlier,there's plenty of analysis to be applied here,all the way up(or down)to the very title itself. While this movie tends to drag and the technical and chronological elements of the film tend to blur and get fudged a little(the way they age Damon and Jolie in this film is uneven at best,unconvincing at worst),it is still something of a "must-see" for people who take ANY interest in world affairs,semi-recent history,intergovernmental agencies and politics(and I would count myself among them). En Toto,an effective,disturbing and intriguing film offering with much to say and muted,intelligent ways of saying it.