Suffocated by its own ambition, but not that bad overall

Rating: 7/10 (29 April 2008)

The obvious inspiration is Scorsese and Coppola: like they masterfully handled the world of organized crime in epic (especially when it comes to the length) films like Casino and The Godfather, Robert De Niro, who won his two Oscars under their direction, aimed to do the same with The Good Shepherd, his long awaited pet project on the early years of the CIA. His ambition is evident in every frame, that's unquestionable; unfortunately, it is that same ambition that ultimately brings down a considerable part of the picture.
In pure Marty style, the movie starts with the story close to its end: in 1961, Edward Sullivan (Matt Damon), one of the founding members of the CIA, is made aware of the Bay of Pigs disaster, realizing one of his men must have switched sides. Toss in a couple of explanatory conversations with colleagues John Turturro and Alec Baldwin, and then the narrative begins to jump back and forth, revealing the whole sorry tale: how Wilson originally joined a college organization named Skull And Bones in 1939 and formed a strange bond with a professor (Michael Gambon) who seemed to have Nazi sympathies; his doomed love affair with a deaf girl, Laura, truncated when he impregnated and was forced to marry Margaret "Clover" Russell (Angelina Jolie); his dealings with Russian and British counterintelligence, which eventually made him the ideal choice for creating a new agency inside the US government.
All this is compressed in a 165-minute opus: overlong in most cases, but far too short to tell everything De Niro has on his mind. Much like Scorsese's Gangs of New York, there's a distinct feeling the director intended to cover a larger time-frame than just two decades, but was forced to back down for the sake of accessibility, part of which requires a "reasonable" length for the theatrical release (the DVD is a rather different matter, as seen in the longer versions of The Lord of the Rings). Sadly, that's not the film's only problem: at almost three hours, one wouldn't expect the makers to make audiences unsure as to whether they can get through the first third of the feature. With continuous time shifts that make Memento look like the most streamlined of flicks, The Good Shepherd doesn't really help its viewers follow the events easily; in fact, it almost alienates them before reverting to some sort of linearity once it's past the one-hour mark.
Of course, maybe such an approach suited the subject, as this is meant to be a cold, objective look at what happens behind the scenes of covert operations: aside from one execution in the first act and a harrowing torture sequence in the second, it is all very cerebral, the center of attention being the chain-smoking guys in hats who pull the strings rather than the hit men who carry out the assignments. In that sense, Matt Damon was a good choice for the lead, Sullivan being the perfect chance to deliver an anti-Bourne. And he succeeds admirably: cold and distant, like a real spy, Damon's performance might be perceived by some as static, but is even more effective when put next to Jolie's pointless screaming. Hers is the only miscast role in the film, although Billy Crudup's English accent challenges realism at times. The rest of the supporting cast does a remarkable job, but suffers from the same defect as the plot structure: having the likes of Baldwin, Gambon, Turturro and De Niro himself (in his best acting role since Jackie Brown) in the same movie is always a pleasure, but reducing their presence to a series of cameos that are consistently alternated doesn't do them much justice. I mean, what kind of person would cast Joe Pesci in his first job since Lethal Weapon 4 (which was released in 1998) and then give him only one scene? Surely the old goodfella deserves better, right?
So, it is very long, that's a given. The first hour is frustrating to say the least. The ensemble cast isn't exactly used to its full strength. And yet it's hard to fully condemn a stylish, ambitious labor of love like The Good Shepherd: for all its flaws, it is admirable for the tenacity De Niro showed by refusing to abandon the project - hardly your regular Saturday night movie, but worth at least one viewing.