A magnificent backdrop but not compelling enough

Rating: 6/10 (21 February 2007)

The 'Good Shepherd' has always struck me as a kind of strange symbol for Christianity. Shepherds look after their flocks so the sheep can be killed and eaten. What's good about that? Fortunately, sheep don't have the intelligence to be paranoid.
With Bourne Identity movies under his belt, Matt Damon has a good pedigree to play spy movies. Is this one a killer or dead on arrival? With a budget of $85m, we've got Oscar-winning actors, writers, cinematographers, and more stars than flocks by night ever get to see. Pet project of actor-turning-director, Robert De Niro, The Good Shepherd tells a story of the CIA from its early days, weighing in at just under three hours.
The scene before the opening credits is the one which the whole movie revolves around, so get your popcorn early. Woe-betide those people who straggled in ten minutes into the film, blocking my view, looking for a seat in the dark and then mumbling into their sweetie-wrappers. They won't get it. Which is a shame, because it's a tantalisingly mysterious and artistically remarkable shot.
A couple are making love. We can't see them clearly and, as we know it's a spy film, you won't need a Pentagon computer to guess it's probably film from a hidden camera. "You're safe here with me," she whispers to him. Yeah right! Obviously they are key characters in a complex web of CIA chicanery, because Matt Damon and his team spend most of the movie trying to figure out who, when and where, and we have to wait till nearly the end to find out.
But although The Good Shepherd is told from Damon's point of view, it's scope is epic, covering the years from 1939 before the CIA was even a speck in President Truman's eye, to 1961 and the Bay of Pigs. We see the founding years, the London Blitz, post-war reconstruction in Berlin, and increasingly intricate machinations as the Cold War gathers pace.
Matt Damon (Edward Wilson) is recruited while still at Yale - and we see his face in one of the very few scenes where it holds anything but inscrutability. He camps it up in drag for a production of Gilbert& Sullivan. Later, he's initiated into a Yale secret society, the Skull and Bones. (This is a real society whose members include George W Bush and Bush Snr, as well as John Kerry.) He starts dating a deaf girl he feels genuine affection for, but she is slow off the mark and no competition for Clover (Angelina Jolie) who seduces him swiftly. Jolie doesn't feature in much of the movie, but when she does, she's as sexy as hell or acting her socks off. It's enough to make you wish she would put down her excellent humanitarian work long enough to take on more of the challenging parts for which is so eminently capable.
Fast forward. A week after his dutiful wedding to a pregnant Clover, Edward is posted abroad for six years, during which time he learns to Trust No One. He also learns useful stuff like 'tying one's shoelaces' (code for 'bump them off please') and how to spot a German mistress telling porkies - and then tying one's shoelaces again. Every so often we flash forward to 1961 to an increasingly hemmed-in and worried Edward who's trying to figure out the pre-credits scene.
This is not a whitewash film - most of the history has been painstakingly researched. People get bumped off or tortured, developing countries are subverted with economic dominance and espionage, and most of Edward's decisions are based on inaccurate or false information. But given what we know of CIA operations today, it feels a bit like a history of the United States that mentions, in passing, how terrible it was that we maybe killed some Indians. Instead of getting someone like John le Carré to write the script, or a CIA whistleblower like Philip Agee, we have polished performer and safe bet, Eric Roth. The Good Shepherd is a comprehensive collection of cinematic professionalism, but without the grit to make waves.
Robert de Niro, in the director's chair, is sadly the weakest link. Although he handles it professionally, almost magisterially, he lacks the experience to slowly build momentum, convey gradual moral decay, or make this the Godfather standard-bearer of CIA films. He's done a fine job - just bitten off a bit more than he can chew. What he deserves credit for is attempting a classic depiction of one of the world's most important institutions and pulling it off with considerable dignity, if not quite the artistic flourish that he would have aspired to, given that his mentors are people like Francis Ford Coppola (who is executive producer). With sufficient dedication, it is easy to imagine De Niro pulling off an Oscar for direction in a future film: his grasp is very broad, and all it needs is tweaking.
Of all the stellar names associated with this film, special mention should go to director of photography, Robert Richardson, whose beautiful lighting, compositions and framing give the Good Shepherd a very classy look. Using mise-en-scène rather than relentless action-effect, allows us time to soak up the atmosphere of lovingly reconstructed sets and adds to a feeling of historicity. Many of the English scenes are shot in subdued tones, reminiscent of The Godfather, and conveying a growing ominousness. Fades from archival footage to full colour are tastefully accomplished and maximise the effect of both. My one reservation is the over-use of unnecessary close-ups, which seems to suggest too keen an eye on the DVD market.
The Good Shepherd is a slightly over-ambitious, over-long movie, but you should see it for Matt Damon's naked mud-wrestling and Angelina Jolie's hot vamp performance if nothing else. If you keep your expectations lower than the hype would suggest, you may well remember and enjoy the images of this beautifully portrayed if relatively storyless film.