Espionage, One Slow Step At A Time

Rating: 8/10 (4 April 2007)

THE GOOD SHEPHERD may take a lot of patience to sit through the nearly three hour tale written by Eric Roth (Munich, Forrest Gump, Ali, The Horse Whisperer, etc) and directed with meticulous attention to detail by Robert De Niro, but in the end the film about the creation of CIA ("ever notice that no one these 'the CIA' just like no one use 'the God'?"). And although the script confuses the viewer by its propensity to meander over many time frames and many places, the result is a tense attention holding look at the machinations of big government and frightening big Intelligence organizations.
We first meet Edward Bell Wilson (Matt Damon, who carries the film well) as a son who witnesses his father's suicide, a fact he will hide for years. He follows in the family footsteps of attending Yale, participating in the infamous Skull and Bones secret club, and progressed to join the government as an agent for Intelligence, eventually helping to form CIA and participate in the Cold War tension with Russia and the Bay of Pigs incident. Wilson is a nebbish on the surface, but underneath lies a man devoted to his country and a man capable of maintaining heavy secrets, even from his wife-of-necessity Clover (Angelina Jolie) whom he marries solely because he got her pregnant. He is distant, covert, and seemingly cold, a trait that he will pass on to his son whose life following CIA results in tragedy.
Along the way from this personal side of the story the plot is filled with politicians, spies, Russian, moles, double agents - all the expected and needed characters for a story of this sort. The cast includes such important actors as Billy Crudup, Joe Pesci, Alec Baldwin, a superb Tammy Blanchard, Robert De Niro himself, Keir Dullea, Michael Gambon, William Hurt, John Turturro, Timothy Hutton and Gabriel Macht, each performing excellent cameos. The production values are equally strong with Robert Richardson as director of photography mixing historical footage with atmospheric cinematography, a fine musical score by Bruce Fowler and Marcelo Zarvos, and a tight editing by Tariq Anwar. The film could easily have been cut by an hour without damaging the effect, but there is something to be said for the level of tension achieved by De Niro's choices that gives us a feeling of being a part of the Intelligence schemes. It takes patience, but the film is worth viewing. Grady Harp