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List Price: $9.99 | | Label: Universal Studios
Salesrank: 7106
Released: April 3, 2007 |
| Our Price: $2.49 |
| Used Price: $0.48 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie and Robert De Niro star in this powerful thriller about the birth of the CIA. Edward Wilson (Damon) believes in America, and will sacrifice everything he loves to protect it. But as one of the covert founders of the CIA, Edward's youthful idealism is slowly eroded by his growing suspicion of the people around him. Everybody has secrets…but will Edward's destroy him? With an all-star cast including Alec Baldwin, Billy Crudup, William Hurt, Timothy Hutton and John Turturro, it's the gripping story David Ansen of Newsweek hails as "spellbinding."
Description of The Good Shepherd (Widescreen Edition):
A complicated movie about the Central Intelligence Agency and its agents, The Good Shepherd isn't your typical spy movie. Though it stars Matt Damon (The Bourne Identity films) and Angelina Jolie (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Lara Croft franchise)--actors with considerable experience in the action-espionage genre--The Good Shepherd requires that they play more subdued and (much less interesting) characters here. The movie focuses on the career or Edward Wilson (Damon), a privileged Yale graduate who goes on to help found the CIA. He is a quiet, serious, and guarded man, even in the most intimate moments with his civilian wife (Jolie, in a role that wastes her talent). Set against a backdrop of real-life events such as the Bay of Pigs, The Good Shepherd is meticulous in creating a realistic timeframe. The film gets a jolt of excitement when Robert DeNiro (in his first directing role since 1993's A Bronx Tale) peppers the screen with appearances by Joe Pesci, Alec Baldwin, and William Hurt. But those moments are too infrequent. At 157 minutes long, the film is crammed with many factual details, but the characters are shortchanged when it comes to development. Viewers have to wonder why anyone, much less someone like Wilson who has everything going for him, would devote his life to a thankless job that brings so little happiness to himself and his family. The Good Shepherd is an ambitious but flawed film. The actors do a formidable job with a well-intentioned but meandering script. However, we meet so many characters and learn so little about each that it's difficult to drum up much empathy for any of them. --Jae-Ha Kim
The Good Shepherd (Widescreen Edition) Reviews:
The Game of Games 
2009-11-08 - I had not read any critical reviews of the film before I saw it, and had no expectations going in. I actually began watching it in the background, while surfing the web, and after a few minutes had to stop what I was doing and focus on the film, having been utterly drawn in. Even though it was quite late, and against my better judgment, I was unable to stop until I reached the end of this very long, and very engaging meditation on the origins of the American CIA, and the problems inherent in both it's mission, it's domain, and it's architecture.
The problems of mission and architecture are nothing new to the history of intelligence. But intelligence is a game that Americans have really only been playing since WWII, unlike the English and the French. In fact, we learned the game from the British as the O.S.S., and the structure of the CIA was largely influenced through British guidance. The film does a good job of exploring the problematic nature of espionage, when seen from the catbird seat. It is a process of continually sifting through information in an attempt to correctly identify authentic, true information from misinformation and disinformation. In this process, your closest associates may be attempting to mislead and deceive you. Your most powerful adversaries may be attempting to enlighten you. Why would they do that? What are they really up to, one and all? And what is your best option to use misinformation to misdirect them, to pull the wool over their eyes, or to move them to embrace one alternative course of action over another? And this is an ongoing dynamic, continuously changing, requiring constant recalibration. This is an environment that breeds creatures uniquely adapted to survival within it--that they become something much different than the rest of us ordinary slobs, part machine, part monster, part logician, part artist, is beside the point--they end up standing behind the great and the powerful, whispering the words in their ear that set armies marching--or not--as the case may be.
If I were to render any criticism at all of this well conceived and executed film, it would be this: in order to cut the topology of the game wide open and expose it in all of it's truly wicked problematic nature, they had to build their colossus on a foot of clay. A wanton socialite seduces an inscrutable and intellectual young man who doesn't care for her and becomes pregnant. This one seminal event grows into the engine that drives the entire story forward. It isn't far-fetched, it doesn't require a great leap of faith to accept, in many ways it is necessary in order to show the depth of the problem domain--but it is an awful coincidence. In a world of carrots and sticks and people who want to motivate you to cooperate with them, each person requires a different set of carrots and sticks. Is there ANYTHING at all which can be used to force Edward Wilson to compromise himself and his loyalty and trustworthiness? De Niro seems to want us to ask: could I do this? Would I do this? Here is a man who some would argue has been put to the ultimate test, and passed--what kind of a man is he? And what if he were different than that? Would he be a Good Shepherd to us, one and all? And where does that leave the sheep? At the mercy of the Shepherd, for good or for bad. Does that let you rest easy at night?
More Character Study than Action Movie
2009-10-07 - Yale graduate (and Skull and Bones member)Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) is recruited out of college as a spy and eventually becomes one of the founding agents of the CIA. In love with a deaf woman but forced to marry another (Angelina Jolie) because he got her pregnant, Wilson spends most of his time overseas and away from family. The movie covers Wilson's career, moving through historical events such as the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam War. But the emphasis is placed on characterization more than anything else. Wilson is a guarded, reserved man who rarely shows emotion. Jolie is a funloving young woman who becomes embittered over their estranged marital state. His son (the only person Wilson shows any sort of emotion with) yearns for his father's approval. Some pretty impressive actors make their appearance: Alec Baldwin, Robert DeNiro, William Hurt, and Joe Pesci, to name a few. Although the movie is well over two hours, it's a fascinating look at the life of a secret agent and the effects it has on his family and friends.
Russians ahead of the C.I.A, in spycraft
2009-10-04 - This movie gives the history of the C.I.A. from the WWII O.S.S.
through the 60's.
The US was betrayed by the British who had important Soviet moles.
The US couldn't do anything well or secret in the 50's and 60's
but the power of the secret agencies still grew.
Here we follow the life of a fictional counter-intelligence
operative/ executive through the post war and the Cuban Bay of Pigs failure.
His life isn't an ideal one and he learns from his teachers and experience to
trust no one. The American Empire comes off as a trained by the British
organization?
Problematic attempt at a serious spy film 
2009-08-25 - Beautifully lit and shot (the movie looks like "The Godfather, Part II"), "The Good Shepherd" is nevertheless long, mostly dull, and muddled in its message. Is the film saying that Matt Damon's character honored his beliefs and ideals during his CIA career, compromised them, or a combination of both? It just wasn't clear how he felt about things, or even (equally unhelpful) how complicit he was in certain activities. And while I don't begrudge Angelina Jolie playing the occasional unglamorous role, her shrill wife character seemed a waste of her talents. "The Good Shepherd" gets a few points for looking good, a handful of tense scenes, and some good supporting performances (including one by director Robert De Niro), but overall it was a disappointment. The DVD looks and sounds great, and features a selection of deleted scenes (revealing an entire excised subplot about the Angelina Jolie character's brother) as its sole special feature.
Out of sedatives, watch The Good Shepherd. 
2009-04-03 - I respect Robert De Niro and Matt Damon, but have they conceived what ingredients should be incorporated into a movie to make it the least bit watchable? By min. 20 I thought I was at least 90 min. into the movie. The only words in my diction I care to employ to describe this movie are tedious, sleep-inducing, ineffective, irritating, and interminably long. Hopefully De Niro and Damon will make more approachable movies from now on.
