The Good Shepherd - A Muddled Story

Rating: 4/10 (25 December 2006)

Having studied the JFK assassination and knowing something about CIA history, I understood some of the key scenes and characters portraying historic events. But the average viewer without such knowledge will be utterly lost. On the whole, I found this tale painfully slow, with too much emphasis on romantic subplots which either went nowhere or did little to push the story forward. The theme of courageous self-sacrifice does not measure up to the movie's billing. There are few surprises. The chief character does as expected. For the most part, he is a ruthless spy master, humorless and detached.
This is a movie which using the same dramatic setting could have gone off in a totally different direction, rather than that of rah-rah patriotism. It is a classic case of producer and director utterly missing their cues.