A good effort by director De Niro, but not, in my opinion, particularly successful

Rating: 7/10 (18 February 2008)

It's always a disappointment when a movie that tries as hard as this one does, and is as well- crafted, doesn't quite make it. The Good Shepherd is not a failure, yet in my opinion it tries to do so much that it loses focus. Ostensibly, the movie is the tale of Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), a serious and honorable Yale graduate who is recruited into the OSS at the start of WWII, learns his way around counter-intelligence, moves on to the CIA when it is formed and eventually becomes a single-minded CIA executive. The Bay of Pigs fiasco serves as a framing device for Wilson's story. Wilson, De Niro wants to show us, was a thoughtful, sensitive young man, deeply affected by his father's suicide, drawn to poetry, who through the years loses his soul, his family and his conscience to the pursuit of America's enemies. In the well-over two hours running time, the movie gives us episode after episode from Wilson's life...the Skull and Bones rigamarole for Yale's superior people, the betrayal of a poetry professor not once, but twice, young love and young love that ends in pregnancy and a marriage, the recruiting and protection of ex-Nazis, the disintegration of his family life, ruthless activities by our side and by the other side, expedient murders, interrogation by simulating drowning and intra-agency maneuvering. Through it all Matt Damon does a fine job of portraying Wilson as a man increasingly shut off from everything but his suspicions, his own definition of honor and his patriotism.
What are we to make of all this? Are we to think that some of the things the CIA does are awful? Or that defense of the country can lead to paranoia? Or that some people can be corrupted by the rationalization needed to do bad things? De Niro, I think, wanted to make all these themes a part of his movie, but he was unable to clearly define what he felt. The movie itself has been given a first-rate production. It features all sorts of well-known actors, perhaps too many for its own good. Popping up in various roles are Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, Billy Crudup, Joe Pesci, Michael Gambon, William Hurt, John Turturro, Keir Dullea and Robert Hutton. Some, such as Jolie, Pesci and Baldwin, are good in their parts but their star recognition factor, for me, was distracting. Some, such as Hurt and Crudup, give excellent performances. And one, Michael Gambon, practically gives lessons to the others on what great, subtle acting is all about. He dominates the scenes he is in, and this doesn't serve Damon (or Wilson well) as Gambon's scenes all involve Damon.
De Niro, for me, also falls into that old Hollywood trap of being all to ready to sacrifice narrative coherence in order to achieve a "wow" effect or to protect his stars. There are two or three murders, one suicide and one graphic scene of torture. In each case, the effect is to make us jump unexpectedly with the "wow" factor. But in each case, a reasonable person could say to themselves, why did they kill that person that way? Wouldn't it have been easier and more in keeping with the themes of the movie to do it more quietly? And in each case the answer is, "Yes," but then we'd have missed the "wow." After awhile, this desire for the "wow" keeps reminding us we're watching another big, Hollywood movie. At another level, there is almost no character development. We're supposed to see Edward Wilson as initially young, sensitive and honorable. But we don't. We're simply told he is. From the minute we see Wilson as a poetry major at Yale, Damon plays him as a closed-in personality. That's the way he starts and that's the way he finishes. He may or may not long for a young woman he meets, but he marries (the honorable thing to do) another young woman when she becomes pregnant. But is he the least bit passionate about the first? Who knows? Is it such a sacrifice to marry the second? Who knows? During WWII we meet John Turturro as a smart-mouthed enlisted man, fairly contemptuous of authority, assigned to a young Edward Wilson. Twenty years later we watch as he does the Sixties equivalent of water-boarding a man who may be a Soviet double agent. What happened in between to turn Turturro's character from a rebel to a torturer? Who knows? Just as disconcerting is that none of the characters age over nearly thirty years. Jolie gets a little dark shadow under her eyes, but that's about it. Damon, Hurt, Baldwin and all the others don't gain any weight, lose any hair, earn any wrinkles or have their jaw lines blur. This is Hollywood, and after a while De Niro allows this to undermine the seriousness he was aiming for.
For me, The Good Shepherd tries to do too much and tries too hard, and isn't able to cast off those tell-tale Hollywood star habits. Still, it's by no means a failure. Many will probably find it more meaningful and enjoyable than I did.