The Good Shepherd

Posted by Loukas Tsouknidas (loukas@filmschoolrejects.com) on February 27, 2007

Robert De Niro is by all means a great actor. Does that mean he can be a good director? His second attempt at it is “The Good Shepherd”, a story about the origins of the CIA, an essay on how to be a textbook spy and a family drama all at once. Sounds intriguing enough as a project. Too bad De Niro lacks the vision to make it a multi layered film with a few answers instead of questions.

Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) is a quiet guy and a good poetry student at an Ivy League University. There, he is gradually recruited by “Skull and Bones” and later on by the FBI. After he successfully rats on his nazi-suspect teacher he shows promise as a future spy. Meanwhile he gets a senator’s daughter (Angelina Jolie) pregnant and goes on to marry her. Unfortunately for his newfound family, duty calls for him to work in Europe, during the first cold war intelligence procedures…

De Niro has in his hands a very delicate matter for America and the whole world. CIA operations have been a subject of political discussion and conspiracy theories for ages. What he achieves is a two and a half hour obsession with Matt Damon. The latter is definitely at his best, giving a great performance as the remote, cold-blooded, almost inhuman CIA executive. It’s not enough.

Suppose we even care about a guy like that, about his condemned family life and his inability to trust anyone, he still remains indifferent as a top class pawn in the spy game. All this drive to conduct his duty and no ambition? He is the head of an organization with “ambiguous” historical activity to say the least. It’s really funny when De Niro appears as as a superior executive and tells Wilson that he has one weakness, he leans towards democracy. I’d like very much to believe him but it’s impossible.

Eric Roth wrote “Munich” before this. Spielberg’s directing gave it an amazing pace that his previous (Insider, Ali) and present scripts surely lack. De Niro’s movie is complemented by it’s great cinematography, the chronological attachment and the cameos by some great actors including Angelina Jolie (that’s got to pass as a cameo). Joe Pesci’s short conversation with Damon is a classic.

Unfortunately this movie’s got no target, avoids answers, asks the viewers a lot of questions and expects them to understand. Understand what?

Read more articles by Loukas Tsouknidas