Pretty good overall

Rating: 7/10 (16 December 2015)

'The Good Shepherd' is at its best when it sticks to nuts-and-bolts cinematic fundamentals: good acting, good shots, engrossing characters, engaging story lines. It is at its worst when it descends into "evolutive" political moralizing: the Cold War was a crack, the Soviets were never a menace, all the U.S. wanted was to keep up its military-industrial complex, the WASP was desperate to keep the Irish Catholic and the Jew out of the rungs of power, etc. etc..
All the same, the film manages to pay tribute both to American history and sociology as well as to the greatness of American cinema. Taking care to show a good cross-section of the post-war U.S. society, the film manages a good send-up of the worst of Old Yankee Puritan society in chronicling the devastating effects of hard-line, Manichean detachment on life. Matt Damon's character is appropriately cold and dehumanized, unable to respond to his dutiful and perceptive ("Bonesmen first; God second") wife, played brilliantly by Angelina Jolie. The melodramatic music recounts to great effect the banal but lovable blockbusters of the 1990s, before giving way to the chilling silence of the rude awakening along the path to sophistication.
Overall a carefully if a bit too cynically crafted work. It does make for an excellent diversion on an evening when one is feeling nostalgic for times past long before one was in fact born. I certainly enjoyed it on a solitary holiday in NYC on 31 December 2006.