alone, friendless and far from home

Rating: Null/10 (9 August 2011)

In Bourne and The Informant, Matt Damon has made a small career in roles playing loners who negotiate their identity in relation to working for The Man. The Good Sheperd fall into the same category. Damon is Edward Wilson, a self-contained individual recruited to the fledgling CIA. He marries badly and allows emotion to cloud his judgment at times. He fights to retain control, till one day he is forced to confront what it has all lead to, and whether it is worth fighting for any more.
To its credit, the film assumes a fair degree of historical awareness and concentration on the part of its audience. The Bay of Pigs is the catalyst for Wilson's reflection on the sum of his worth. In investigating what went wrong, he recalls his strained relationship with his father, his failed marriage, his abandonment of the woman he loves. The elliptical structure can confuse at times, especially as Damon fails to physically age over the 30-odd years that the narrative spans. Ultimately, the self-containment of the character becomes a bit much to bear, and the story is plodding and pedestrian at times. Worth watching, but one feels it could have been so much more.