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I was trying to kick around a few clever things to say but all I came up with was “Don’t call it the Good German” and “Was it a good Shepherd.” Yeah both of those suck. Luckily for me, and you, and the world, and Matt Damon, and Robert DeNiro, this movie did not suck. In fact, it was quite good.

The plot of The Good Shepherd follows Edward Wilson (Damon) through his years, starting out as a promising young college student. As with all colleges, communists are bound to pop up and try to subvert the system and the FBI taps Wilson to spy on a college professor. He does well. Really well.

After an initiation into the Skulls (yeah, the ones you’ve heard about) and some rocky relationship roads between a woman he really loves and the hot, but borderline crazy Angelina Jolie, he ends up married to Jolie and does the only rational thing. Hooks up with the OSS, the military’s intelligence service.

He dables in the Bay of Pigs, which goes disastrously and suspiciously wrong. He flirts with his rival Soviet intelligence officer and gains a reputation for being a man carved of stone. On the home front, his wife Margaret (Jolie) turns to the booze for comfort while raising their son alone.

I don’t want to give away too much plot. If you’re at all interested in this movie, go see it. You’ll like it. If you’re semi-interested, hell, go see it anyways. It’s good. We bounce around exotic spy locations like Germany, Cuba, and Africa and all with good reason. We see double-crosses and fake outs. The movie lacks action but piles on the drama and treats the audience with respect. The movie hides things from you and just about when you’ve figured it out, the movie knows you have and just gives you the answer. It’s smart like that.

Damon gives one of his better performances I feel and really locks the whole film down. John Turturro’s character is also really good. The only bad acting in this comes from Angelina Jolie who is no longer capable of being anyone but Angelina Jolie to me and I’m sure many others. When we first meet here she’s supposed to be young but seems old, like she is. When her and Damon are on screen together it feels like The Graduate 2. Her performance gets better further into the movie as her character’s age catches up to her own and her alcoholism takes over.

The direction is solid and the film has a good pace. There is some CGI sprinkled in and some of it could use a re-render or some new texture, but it’s few and far between. The score is also pretty sweet and the cinematography is spot on most of the time.

This is a movie you should check out. I really liked it. It was tight, haute, and nice. Damon really earns some points with me here and I can’t wait to watch this again.