Once Upon Time In The CIA !

Rating: Null/10 (22 June 2008)

The intention was great. The history of the CIA, with the controversial concept of the good shepherd. The drama of that character. This is all good, but too much also!
First of all, it's that desire of making a mini-series out of one movie. The multiplying story lines, along with some actors who looked superficially the same, not to mention the boring pace of (Matt Damon)-all of that managed well to distract us all the way.
(De Niro) as a director made only one movie 13 years earlier, (A Bronx Tale - 1993), and what a fine movie it was. But in here, he wanted to make an epic, like Sergio Leone's epic about America (Once Upon a Time in America - 1984), Scorsese's epic about the mob (Goodfellas - 1990), or about Las Vegas (Casino - 1995), where he was the lead actor in all of them. Though (The Good Shepherd) turned out to be something like the trilogy of (The Godfather) inharmoniously packed together in the same time!
Over and above: the casting! Despite all the effort that (Matt Damon) did, he wasn't the suitable man for the job. He looked 25 years old all along, especially in front of (Angelina Jolie) who looked 10 years older than him. He wasn't the man with the stony face, who seems that he has all the secrets of the world. You can say that again about the first nominated actor for the role (Leonardo DiCaprio). Because to tell you the truth, the best man for such a role was (De Niro) himself, but when he was younger.
Another defect which's quite fatal: the implicit supposition that the audience knows the background of the events, the characters, or even the intimations. For instances, as a poor man myself from where exactly may I know that in the spying business tying the shoe is a signal to watchers that the meeting went badly?, or that (Joe Pesci) was representing a real wise guy?, or the truth about (Ulysses)? In fact, I knew all of that by reading about the movie, not from the movie itself!
After 167 min of extremely jammed script, unexplained events, too many characters, boring presence; mainly from (Damon), you might feel horrible rejection for that movie, despite the good music, cinematography, and intention. It's where the ambitions are bigger than the resources, and The Good Shepherd isn't really good.