Great thriller directed by Robert De Niro

Rating: Null/10 (12 December 2019)

Directed by Robert De Niro, the Good Shepherd is a great character study as well as a thriller. This is great direction by De Niro here. At its heart this is a fictionalized account of the birth and early years of the CIA. While the names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent, many of the characters have real-life counterparts. The lengthy movie (15 minutes shy of three hours) unspools like a cold war spy novel, with betrayals, double-crosses, triple-crosses, and fluid allegiances. The protagonist isn't the most sympathetic individual to reach the screen, but the vortex of moral and ethical uncertainties in which he becomes caught makes him an intriguing, although not likeable, individual. The length is a drawback (almost 3 hours), but not a big one since the movie earns the majority of its 165-minute running time. De Niro pulls the viewer into the world he has created and holds him there, sometimes spellbound.