movie reviews good shepherd

Secrets without mysteries

Matt Damon and Alec Baldwin in "The Good Shepherd." It's not their fault.

If you think George Tenet’s Central Intelligence Agency was a disaster, wait until you see Robert De Niro’s torpid, ineffectual movie about the history of the agency, “The Good Shepherd.”

Once again, responsibility for the large-scale failure does not lie with the valiant and hard-working operatives in the field (or the actors on the screen), but with the mismanagement of the director himself. It is unlikely, however, that any awards — including Presidential Medals of Freedom — will be bestowed upon De Niro or his plodding writer, Eric Roth , for their misfeasance.

The story, and the history, are fascinating — or ought to have been. Tracing the footsteps of a colorless career spy, Edward Wilson ( Matt Damon ), “The Good Shepherd” takes us on a long, hard slog through a maze of … non-linear narrative techniques. Look over there: It’s the botched Bay of Pigs operation — which plays onscreen like the inept invasion and occupation of Iraq. On your left, behind you, is the World War II diorama, featuring a window on the creation of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). And on your right, just ahead: the Cold War covert-ops exhibit, with pop-up cardboard cameos from the KGB!

It’s all far, far less exciting than it sounds, thanks in no small part to the laborious screenplay credited to Roth. Can this really be the guy who shared credit for writing Michael Mann’s “ The Insider ” and Steven Spielberg’s “ Munich “? “The Good Shepherd” is as dull and inert as those movies are passionate and thrilling.

Imagine a spy movie — a spy movie! — with no intrigue, no suspense, and scarcely any characters, even though there are lots of parts and plenty of good actors to play them. Keir Dullea — you know, the guy from “ 2001: A Space Odyssey ” — appears barely long enough to register that he is, in fact, Keir Dullea. A half-hour later, there’s a banquet scene and, hey, isn’t that Keir Dullea, seated third from the left at the — ? Oh, he’s not in the frame anymore.

The rest of the actors, some of whom remain in the frame longer than Dullea, don’t seem to be having much fun, either. Michael Gambon , Alec Baldwin and Joe Pesci (one scene and he’s gone) provide the only dashes of zest in the film. And if you can’t spot the turncoat (with the preposterous accent) virtually the moment he appears, then you’re not paying attention, and who can blame you?

Matt Damon’s character (a composite supposedly based on several actual spione) is by nature a cold fish, and it’s not the actor’s fault that he frequently lies there on the screen like a dead one. Wilson is a man with many secrets, and no mysteries.

The most interesting thing about him is not that he engaged in some dignity-defying All-Male Nude Mud Wrestling during a Skull & Bones initiation (it’s a moment that begs for Borat), or that he once knew all the words to “The Whiffenpoof Song.” It’s that he was once, briefly, funny enough to play Little Buttercup in a Yalie production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “H.M.S. Pinafore.” Or, perhaps the most interesting thing about him is that he stopped being interesting right after college. Also, when he was five, his father committed suicide (hello Timothy Hutton – and goodbye) and he claims he never read the suicide note. When we do discover the nature of its contents… well, it’s got to be the dullest secret never told. Poor Wilson: his entire existence is an anti-climax, but maybe that’s the point. His “Rosebud” isn’t even Rosebud.

Spies, and spy movies, may be somber but they don’t have to be glum. The lonely moles in this picture may keep their lips sealed when it comes to international huggermuggery, but they are forever whining to one another about how lousy it is not to have true friends and not to be able to trust anyone, as if these were things they all didn’t know already.

One of the movie’s themes is that history is always interrupting one’s private life. This is conveyed repeatedly, and nearly always literally — in one scene, by having an emcee in a small jazz club grab the mike during a performance of “Blue Skies” to announce that England and France are at war with Germany. The urgency immediately vanishes from his voice and, in convivial tones, he then reminds the club’s patrons to enjoy the remainder of the evening — they’ll be there all night! The band picks up “Blue Skies” again (though “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” might have been a better choice) and the couples on the floor (including Wilson and his girlfriend) resume their synchronized movements because, well, what else are they supposed to do? Go shopping?

So, is this a metaphor for America’s willful reluctance to get involved in the European war prior to the invasion of Pearl Harbor? Or are the bewildered dancers simply wondering if the news from overseas could not, perhaps, have waited another minute or two, at least until the band wrapped up the Irving Berlin tune?

Late in the film, a Crucial Mystery Character is introduced boarding a small plane on a remote African airstrip. This in itself does not bode well for CMC’s longevity. While related events unfold in other parts of the world, the film keeps cutting back to this uneventful flight in an awkward attempt to whip up “suspense.” But suspense is not the same thing as anticipation, especially when it turns to plain old annoyance over just how much longer the inevitable event (hint: deadly) will be artificially delayed before we can move on to something — anything — else.

And so, scene after clumsy scene, minute after tedious minute (there are 167 of them altogether), “The Good Shepherd” aimlessly meanders to its dead-end conclusion, rarely missing an opportunity to loop back for an unnecessary flashback.

Jim Emerson

Jim Emerson is the founding editor of RogerEbert.com and has written lots of things in lots of places over lots of years. Mostly involving movies.

The Good Shepherd

Angelina Jolie as Clover Wilson
Matt Damon as Edward Wilson
Robert De Niro as Bill Sullivan
Keir Dullea as Sen. Russell
Alec Baldwin as Sam Murach
Billy Crudup as Arch Cummings

Directed by

Robert De Niro

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Movie Review | 'The Good Shepherd'

Company Man: Hush, Hush, Sweet Operative

By Manohla Dargis

Dec. 22, 2006

“The Good Shepherd,” a chilly film about a spy trapped in the cold of his own heart, seeks to put a tragic human face on the Central Intelligence Agency, namely that of Matt Damon. The story more or less begins and ends at the Bay of Pigs. In between there is a spicy, lively interlude in the 1930’s at Yale University, where little boys are made of skull and bones and secret societies. Yale leads to World War II, cloak and dagger and a British spy cut from the same bespoke cloth as Kim Philby. Then it’s over to Washington, where the citadels of power loom against the cheerless sky like tombstones.

Mr. Damon, who plays a super-spy warrior in the “Bourne” films, excels at secretive men, and few are as mysterious as Edward Wilson, the spy catcher in “The Good Shepherd.” (The title refers to the Bible passage in which Jesus says: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”) Though a composite, Wilson seems largely based on the fascinating, freakishly paranoid James Jesus Angleton, a Yale graduate and poetry lover who served in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and ran C.I.A. counterintelligence from 1954 to 1974. Mr. Angleton cultivated orchids; Wilson builds the more prosaically symbolic miniature ships in bottles.

Mr. Angleton is now widely thought to have hurt the C.I.A. more than he helped it, and articles on the agency’s Web site (cia.gov) frame his tenure in generally unfavorable terms (it had “devastating results,” for one). Written by Eric Roth and directed by Robert De Niro, “The Good Shepherd” doesn’t address the full consequences of that devastation, partly because it wants to take on the institution as well as the man, and partly, one imagines, because Mr. Angleton’s crippling paranoia would have been too difficult to shape into a neat narrative. “The Good Shepherd” is an origin story about the C.I.A., and for the filmmakers that story boils down to fathers who fail their sons, a suspect metaphor that here becomes all too ploddingly literal.

Certainly fathers and sons offer a serviceable alternative to martinis and Aston Martins. Created in 1947, the C.I.A. has been responsible for many deeds, including our abiding fascination with spooks. No matter which way public sentiment shifts about the agency and its handiwork (Chile, Nicaragua), we remain fascinated with spies, or at least an idea of them, an idea in which matchbox cameras and microphones invariably figure more prominently than miles of locked filing cabinets. Secrets make agencies like the C.I.A. sexy, no matter how rumpled the raincoats. The most interesting thing about “The Good Shepherd” is how hard the filmmakers work not only to demystify the agency, but also to strip it of its allure, its heat.

In “Betrayal,” a book about Aldrich Ames, the double agent who for years ferried C.I.A. secrets to the Soviets, the agency is characterized as “a cross between Yale’s secret Skull and Bones society and the post office.” In its basic outline Mr. Roth’s overly busy screenplay takes the same approach to the agency as it follows Wilson’s journey through institutions of power. At Yale he joins the Skull and Bones, where the power elite helps reproduce itself by bonding and dressing like the orgiastic partygoers in “Eyes Wide Shut.” The all-male members of this clandestine group don’t have sex with one another, at least on screen, but they do mud-wrestle naked, a ritual that underscores the homosocial nature of Wilson’s world.

Yale and World War II are the juiciest bits of the story, partly because they involve the charismatic Dr. Fredericks, played by a superb Michael Gambon. A Yale professor with a leer as insinuating as his walking stick, Dr. Fredericks tries to seduce Wilson into some antidemocratic chicanery through their shared love of poetry. (At Yale, Mr. Angleton helped found a poetry magazine in which he published Ezra Pound, a family acquaintance.) This attempted seduction parallels a rather more comical one involving Angelina Jolie, who plays Margaret Russell, the sister of another Yale student. With her poppy-red lipstick and raucously aggressive sexuality, Margaret proves a far more successful seducer than Dr. Fredericks, as female pulchritude and power triumph over manly poetry and secrets.

Ah, but not for long. This is a man’s world, after all, filled with specters skulking through alleys with blood on their hands and the world on their shoulders. Conscripted into the O.S.S., Wilson travels to London, where he apprentices in espionage and intelligence and meets Arch Cummings (Billy Crudup), a fop with a posh accent patterned on Kim Philby. The film shies away from the more provocative aspects of Mr. Angleton’s long acquaintance with Mr. Philby, and the years they lunched together while Mr. Philby worked for the Soviets. Whatever its true nature, the friendship hurt Mr. Angleton’s marriage, as he later admitted: “Once I met Philby, the world of intelligence that had once interested me consumed me. The home life that had seemed so important faded in importance.”

That spells trouble for Ms. Jolie, alas, who after her spectacular entrance has to spend most of the film as the aggrieved, abandoned wife. It is not a good fit. A force of nature, Ms. Jolie reads more believably when she’s running through the jungle in boots and a bikini, as she does in the “Tomb Raider” flicks, than when standing on the sidelines in a domestic nightmare. But stand and screech and gamely slosh the booze she does while Mr. Damon’s spy helps win the war and later helps turn the C.I.A. into a shadow empire with some dependable character actors: Mr. De Niro as one of the agency’s founders, the dependably great Alec Baldwin as an F.B.I. agent and an equally fine William Hurt as the pipe-smoking head of the C.I.A.

Mr. De Niro does fine in his avuncular role and, in the main, even better as the film’s director. He imbues “The Good Shepherd” with a funereal vibe that works especially well on the dark, dank streets of London, where Wilson learns his first repellent lesson in spy-catching, and during his early years in Washington. Among the film’s most striking visual tropes is the image of Wilson simply going to work in the capital alongside other similarly dressed men, a spectral army clutching briefcases and silently marching to uncertain victory. In silhouette the men recall the gangsters in a Jean-Pierre Melville film, even as their anonymity evokes the drones in Madeleine L’Engle’s book “A Wrinkle in Time” who are ruled by an evil disembodied brain called IT.

Who rules the drones in “The Good Shepherd”? Who is IT? The president, the people, American mining and banana companies, the ghosts of fathers past, the agency itself? It’s hard to know, though now the C.I.A. answers to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. These are hard questions, but they are also too big, too complex and perhaps too painful for even this ambitious (2 hours, 37 minutes) project, which can only elude and insinuate, not enlighten and inform. Although the film seems true in broad outline and scrupulous detail, and the postwar Berlin rubble looks as real as the documentary footage of Fidel Castro slipped between the lightly fictionalized intrigue, there is something ungraspable and unknowable about this world, even if it is also one we ourselves have helped create.

“The Good Shepherd” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). There is some violence, including a scene of torture, as well as adult language and tactful sex.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD

Opens today nationwide.

Directed by Robert De Niro; written by Eric Roth; director of photography, Robert Richardson; edited by Tariq Anwar; music by Marcelo Zarvos and Bruce Fowler; production designer, Jeannine Oppewall; produced by James G. Robinson, Jane Rosenthal and Mr. De Niro; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 157 minutes.

WITH: Matt Damon (Edward Wilson), Angelina Jolie (Clover/Margaret Russell), Alec Baldwin (Sam Murach), Tammy Blanchard (Laura), Billy Crudup (Arch Cummings), Robert De Niro (Bill Sullivan), Keir Dullea (Senator John Russell Sr.), Michael Gambon (Dr. Fredericks), Martina Gedeck (Hanna Schiller), William Hurt (Philip Allen), Timothy Hutton (Thomas Wilson), Mark Ivanir (Valentin Mironov No. 2), Gabriel Macht (John Russell Jr.), Lee Pace (Richard Hayes), Joe Pesci (Joseph Palmi), Eddie Redmayne (Edward Wilson Jr.), John Sessions (Valentin Mironov No. 1/Yuri Modin), Oleg Stefan (Ulysses/Stas Siyanko), John Turturro (Ray Brocco), Laila Robins (Toddy Allen), Christopher Evan Welch (Photography Technical Officer), Neal Huff (Teletype Operations Officer), Jason Butler Harner (Teletype Communications Officer), Amy Wright (Safe House Operations Officer) and Ann Hampton Callaway (1961 Deer Island Singer).

The Good Shepherd Review

23 Feb 2007

167 minutes

Good Shepherd, The

You can’t fault Robert De Niro The Director for a lack of ambition. Fourteen years ago, he made his debut with A Bronx Tale, just the sort of small-scale, intimate, script- and performance-driven picture you might expect from a man hailed by his peers as the actors’ actor. For a while, it seemed that — like Charles Laughton (The Night Of The Hunter) or Jack Lemmon (Kotch) — De Niro was one of those folks who rack up a single directorial credit just to see what it was like, and then go back to a busy career doing something else. Now, with De Niro The Actor settled into a rut of lazily okay send-ups of his previous intensity (the Analyze... and Meet The... films) and forgettable, issue-heavy thrillers (City By The Sea, 15 Minutes), De Niro The Director returns after a ten-year development period with a second film that is a significant step up in scale from A Bronx Tale.

The Good Shepherd, in which De Niro takes only a vivid acting cameo as the patriotic but ethical General Bill Sullivan, is the kind of Big Picture, using a great chunk of 20th century history to cast a cold eye on America, which often turns up about the time that Academy Award nominations are being solicited. Scripted by Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, The Insider, Munich) and based on a ton of research, this chronicles the beginnings of the Central Intelligence Agency, from its origins in World War II as the Office Of Strategic Services, through expansion as America engages in a Cold War with the Soviet Union that is often fought behind the scenes in Third World countries as the superpowers jockey for position. The tale is lightly fictionalised, with pseudonyms (Sullivan, for instance, stands in for the real-life General ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan), composite characters (Billy Crudup’s British spy combines several similar figures) and made-up folks interacting with real events (here, the Bay Of Pigs invasion fails through a single intelligence leak rather than amateur tactics and White House hesitation).

The central figure, loosely based on long-term spooks James Jesus Angleton and Richard Bissell, is preppie idealist Edward Wilson (oddly, the real-life Angleton was more complex and flamboyant than his movie stand-in). The film revolves around a very buttoned-down Matt Damon as a spy a world away from Jason Bourne, who tries hard with cheek-twitches and wounded looks to lend inner life to a character known for not giving anything away. In 1961, Edward worries through a personal and professional quandary after the disastrous attempted counter-coup against Castro, poring over a blurry snapshot and a tape-recording as he tries to find out who passed on the plans to the Reds. Meanwhile, flashbacks take us through Edward’s ascent in the Secret Service, which begins at Yale when he is recruited (while taking off his drag after giving an uncharacteristically flouncy performance as Poor Little Buttercup in HMS Pinafore) into the famously hush-hush Skull And Bones Society, which turns out to be the talent pool from which US intelligence recruits its big thinkers.

Even before he’s officially a spy, Edward snoops on a pro-Nazi, gay poetry professor (Michael Gambon, defaulting to his Singing Detective trenchcoat slyness) as a favour for an FBI man (Alec Baldwin, in one of his trademarked sinister-but-jovial cameos). After brief time-outs for romance on the beach with nice deaf girl Laura (Tammy Blanchard) and a hasty marriage to the high-born Clover (Angelina Jolie, miscast in a role for which Kate Bosworth would be overqualified), Edward gets into the Office of Strategic Services in London and Berlin, acquiring a proletarian sidekick (John Turturro) who occasionally handles the fist-in-the-face business that’s a necessary adjunct to the paper-shuffling and rumour-mongering which is the usual business of the Agency. In the post-War scramble for Nazi scientists, Edward learns a hard lesson about his new enemies, and begins a John le Carré-style, decades-long contest of wits with Soviet spymaster ‘Ulysses’ (Oleg Stefan).

Like too many films about exclusively male pursuits, this feels obliged to have womenfolk pop in and nag about being neglected. The unhappy marriage to a socially prominent beauty is a straight lift from le Carré’s George Smiley, and pretty much dead space in the movie despite Jolie’s best efforts. Clover is supposed to provide an outsider’s viewpoint on the secret world, but there are far more telling, less blatant reminders from De Niro’s own character as he turns up in small scenes, more and more crippled, to stress that being a patriot is no excuse for the utter ruthlessness and frankly self-serving behaviour (epitomised by Establishment sneak William Hurt) that becomes increasingly endemic as the Cold War grinds on. The last third of the film is dominated by an unbelievable, not-very interesting plot about Edward Junior (Eddie Redmayne), the neurotic son who whines his way into the Agency, is clearly bad news for everyone and does more harm to American foreign policy than the actual traitors.

From being in The Godfather Part II, 1900, Once Upon A Time In America and GoodFellas, De Niro has picked up a knack for broad-canvas historical drama, and this is one of surprisingly few American films to deal not with up-from-the-gutter toughs but the hereditary, Ivy League power elite who actually run the country. When Edward enters into a shady deal with a mobster (a friendly cameo from Joe Pesci), the crook harps on about the cultural vitality of Italian, Irish and black Americans, and asks what the blue-bloods have in place of family, music or church. The pale Yalie snaps, “The United States of America — the rest of you are just visiting.”

There’s a lot of fascinating history here, and Roth and De Niro make a fair fist of retelling it through one man’s story — but for such a long film, it’s surprisingly shallow. Apart from Damon, who keeps everything close to his chest, most of the rest of the excellent cast are aboard only for a few scenes apiece and basically do ‘turns’, with only Blanchard, as the girl Edward should have married, really coming over as an actual, live person. As a Cold War story, it’s mostly men in rooms gloomily plotting, with the occasional severed finger in a coffee can to remind us that other agents are getting killed while all this is going on, and — though it’s all very credible and serious — you can’t help wishing sometimes that this movie was on the ground where the action is.

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Cast & crew
User reviews

Metacritic reviews

The good shepherd.

100 The New Yorker David Denby The New Yorker David Denby One of the most impressive movies ever made about espionage.
88 ReelViews James Berardinelli ReelViews James Berardinelli De Niro pulls the viewer into the world he has created and holds him there, sometimes spellbound, until the story is over and the end credits roll.
80 The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt While a bit unwieldy at nearly three hours and at times slow going, the film is absolutely fascinating for anyone who shares De Niro's passions.
80 Time Time Damon is terrific in the role--all-knowing, never overtly expressing a feeling. Indeed, so is everyone else in this intricate, understated but ultimately devastating account of how secrets, when they are left to fester, can become an illness, dangerous to those who keep them, more so to nations that base their policies on them.
75 Entertainment Weekly Scott Brown Entertainment Weekly Scott Brown Here, he's (Damon) the ultimate enigma machine, a man willing to erase himself for his country. Does that make him a hero? The Good Shepherd is too closemouthed to let on.
70 Newsweek David Ansen Newsweek David Ansen Still, even if the movie's vast reach exceeds its grasp, it's a spellbinding history lesson. The Good Shepherd demands you watch it like a spy: alert, paranoid, never knowing whom you can trust, or who will stab you in the back.
63 Rolling Stone Peter Travers Rolling Stone Peter Travers Shepherd wants to say something profound about the effect of a deceitful government on human values. But it's tough to slog through a movie that has no pulse.
60 The New York Times Manohla Dargis The New York Times Manohla Dargis The most interesting thing about The Good Shepherd is how hard the filmmakers work not only to demystify the agency, but also to strip it of its allure, its heat.
50 Variety Variety Robert De Niro's second film as a director adopts a methodical approach and deliberate pace in attempting to grasp an almost forbiddingly intricate subject, with a result that is not boring, exactly, but undeniably tedious.
50 Village Voice Village Voice The Good Shepherd needed to be either considerably longer -- more like 1979's "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" miniseries -- or considerably shorter (word has it De Niro cut 30 minutes). Right now, it's stuck in the deadly dull middle in which everything happens but nothing matters since the filmmakers can't stick with one event or idea long enough for it to, well, stick.
See all 33 reviews on Metacritic.com
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DVD & Streaming

The Good Shepherd

Drama , Mystery/Suspense , Romance

Content Caution

In Theaters

Matt Damon as Edward Wilson; Angelina Jolie as Clover Wilson; Eddie Redmayne as Edward Wilson Jr.; Alec Baldwin as Sam Murach; Michael Gambon as Dr. Fredricks; John Turturro as Ray Brocco; Billy Crudup as Arch Cummings; Robert De Niro as Gen. Sullivan; Tammy Blanchard as Laura

Home Release Date

Robert De Niro

Distributor

Universal Pictures

Movie Review

After joining the power-brokering and ultra-secret Skull and Bones society while a student at Yale, Edward Wilson is recruited into counter-intelligence for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services by General Sullivan just prior to America’s entering World War II. We learn early on that Edward’s father, an admiral, was a traitor who committed suicide when Edward was a boy. Now in his 20s, Edward is emotionally controlled, detail-oriented, patriotic, and a perfect candidate for the secrecy and duplicity of intelligence work. His one emotional attachment is to a deaf girl, a fellow student at Yale. However, when a one-night stand with his best friend’s sister leads to her pregnancy, a quick wedding follows. A week later, Edward leaves for his assignment in Europe, not to return to his wife, Clover, and their son, Edward Jr., until the war ends five long years later.

Edward is next called on by General Sullivan to head up counter-intelligence for the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency. At the expense of his family and, really, all of his relationships, Edward spends the rest of his life buried in the work of the cold war era CIA. Along the way, he duels with his counterpart in Russian intelligence, makes use of a questionable but high-ranking Russian defector and eventually tracks down a leak inside the CIA responsible for the Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco.

Positive Elements

Although his commitment comes at the expense of his family and, occasionally, his ethics, Edward tirelessly (if somewhat joylessly) sacrifices himself to frustrate America’s enemies and secure her safety and freedom. Thus, in what may be pointed to as one of the film’s most positive messages, Edward’s story exposes the limits and illustrates the sometimes negative impact of using deception and secrecy in an attempt to accomplish positive outcomes.

Spiritual Elements

A reverend says grace at two retreats for members of the Skull and Bones. Clover notes both times that God is acknowledged after the salute to the secret society. General Sullivan states that the OSS is not looking for Jews, Negroes or (very many) Catholics. Later, he admits he believes in a just God and, thus, he feels that he must always err on the side of democracy.

At a meeting between Edward and a Russian spy at a museum, a kids’ choir can be heard singing nearby, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” Late in the film, Edward notices an inscription inside the newly built CIA building. It’s a quote from John 8:32: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” He’s not impressed. A colleague’s answer to a question about why “the” is never used to modify CIA involves him comparing the agency to God.

Sexual & Romantic Content

Pivotal to the movie’s plot are some grainy, indistinct black-and-white photos that accompany a surveillance audio recording of a couple having sex. The unidentified male seems to be distributing classified information. While at Yale, Edward spurns the sexual advance of a male poetry professor, a man later made to suffer for his refusal to stop having sex with younger men. To become initiated into the Skull and Bones, Edward engages in nude (but non-sexual) mud wrestling with other male initiates; an upperclassmen urinates on them from above. Also nude, Edward lounges on an altar of sorts and tell the group a deep secret. Brief rear nudity is glimpsed in both scenes.

Edward welcomes an invitation to sex from a girlfriend, but she changes her mind before they get very far. However, we do see Edward indulge in three sexual encounters over the course of his life, complete with movement, sexual sounds and partial female breast nudity. Each act leads to harsh negative consequences for Edward, including pregnancy, an unwelcome wedding, the near-dissolution of a marriage, and even an assassination.

Violent Content

In a flashback, Edward is a boy when he hears a gunshot and discovers the dead body of his father. Some blood is seen. Over the course of Edward’s career, he is connected to the deaths of several people: a man attacked by thugs screams horrifically before his body is tossed in a river; another jumps to his death from a window resulting in a pool of blood on the sidewalk; a woman is shot and killed at close range (blood is again visible); another is thrown to her death from a plane; a suspected spy is brutally beaten, stripped naked and tortured with a water-boarding technique. An amputated finger is delivered to send a message.

Crude or Profane Language

In addition to about a half-dozen uses of the f-word, milder profanities include “h—,” “d–n” and “a–.” Crude euphemisms evoke sexual organs and bodily functions.

Drug & Alcohol Content

In the 1940s and ’50s, smoking is common among most of the characters. One man still smoking in the early ’60s looks pretty sick and blames the cigarettes. Drinking is also common, especially at social functions. Clover develops a drinking problem and often appears to be somewhat inebriated. LSD is used as a kind of truth serum during an interrogation.

Other Noteworthy Elements

In a rare moment of revealing his own thoughts, Edward says that all the ethnic and religious groups other than white protestants are “just visiting” America. An Italian gangster Edward consults for intelligence invokes the n-word.

Robert De Niro’s second feature-length directing effort is as intricately detailed and finely crafted as an elegant timepiece. The writing (which pushes the story back and forth through time), the acting, and the period sets and costuming all move together with precision. Unfortunately, although the story is historically fascinating and revolves around meaningful themes of truthfulness, family, patriotism and the value of espionage, it lacks emotional resonance. That void—along with scenes that include obscene language, brief sex and/or realistic violence—left me checking my timepiece long before the nearly three-hour film had wound down.

Among the large, recognizable cast, Matt Damon is especially convincing and consistent as Edward, a man who rarely gives anything about himself away. No sentiment. No information. Very few hints as to motive or desire. While making him perfect for the spy game, it cripples him as a husband and father—and possibly as a protagonist. The stolid emotional remove makes it tough to empathize with him as the hero (antihero?) of his own sprawling history.

To his credit, De Niro refuses to ever apply a veneer of glitz to the CIA or unduly lionize its founding members. For instance, when a Russian spymaster attempts to engage Edward in the traditional movie-style banter between rival spooks, Edward barely says a word. It’s never a game for him. Or for the viewer.

Understanding that mindset actually helps compensate for all the coldness and detachment flowing from the screen, and unearths the power of the underlying (and tangled) lessons learned and questions raised. Edward is a man committed at his core to truth who spends his life constructing falsehoods. And in attempting to reverse the sins of his father’s betrayal of his nation, Edward repeats and builds on the man’s crimes against his family. It’s a desperate tragedy … that left me strangely unmoved, due in large part to the fact that the devastation seems to leave no mark on the central character himself.

A final file entry: The Good Shepherd refuses to ever endorse the rightness or wrongness of the CIA’s actions. Its point of view is expressed by De Niro himself as General Sullivan, the organization’s creator. He cites espionage and counter-intelligence as a necessary evil, one that must be both wielded and checked by civilian government. Then De Niro helps us see how the necessity and the evil walk hand-in-hand in Edward’s life. He forces the question of whether systematic falsehood can really be effectively and morally utilized for the good of a nation. And his story has the cold-hearted power to strengthen our personal resolve to tell the truth always and never to sacrifice our families for the sake of an undeserving mission.

Christopher Lyon

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The good shepherd.

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 1 Review
Kids Say 0 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

By Cynthia Fuchs , based on child development research. How do we rate?

Thriller is too mature and intense for kids.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 17+?

A grainy, shadowy sex scene forms a central mystery (it's a surveillance tap

Young boy hears the shot as his father commits suicide in another room, then see

Characters drink (wine, champagne, vodka) and smoke lots of cigarettes, partly a

About four uses of "f--k," one use each of "ass," "hell

Any Positive Content?

Spies are devious, curel, and determined, extolling the virtues of patriotism bu

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A grainy, shadowy sex scene forms a central mystery (it's a surveillance tape, shown repeatedly); Skull and Bones intiates engage in naked mud wrestling (mud covers explicit elements); Edward thinks his teacher at Yale is coming on to him, but he may be trying to draw him into his Nazi group; several kissing scenes; sex scene between Margaret and Edward shows movement, but they remain clothed (they're outside); sex between Edward and Laura results in threats and surveilllance photos (nothing explicit); after sex between Edward and his German assistant (offscreen), her breast is seen briefly; reference to Russians being "short between the legs," and an interrogation subject is stripped (brief full frontal nudity).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Young boy hears the shot as his father commits suicide in another room, then sees the body with blood on floor; violent acts include murders and assassinations by gunshot, knifing, strangling, poisoning; images of post-Blitz London (wreckage); several mlitary "operations" show bombs and gunfire; severed finger sent to a character as a threat; naked interrogation subject is tortured, then jumps out a window and appears broken-bodied and bloody on sidewalk below; woman is thrown from a plane (you see her body descending from above).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters drink (wine, champagne, vodka) and smoke lots of cigarettes, partly as an indication of the era and partly to show their efforts at self-medication. Margaret is drunk and angry in several scenes. CIA interrogators inject a subject with LSD to solicit information.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

About four uses of "f--k," one use each of "ass," "hell," and "son of a bitch." Sexual slang ("pr--k," "t-ts").

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Spies are devious, curel, and determined, extolling the virtues of patriotism but seemingly achieving their ends at any cost; Edward is distant from his family; his wife resents him and drinks too much, his son acts out his resentment in other ways.

Parents need to know that although older teens may be interested in this adult-targeted thriller because of stars Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie, it's slow going (and long) and has mature political and moral themes. Violence is frequent (weapons include guns, knives, and bombs and tanks during WWII in London), with two suicide scenes (one via gunshot, the other via jumping out a window) and a graphic torture scene in which CIA agents abuse a Russian spy. Edward and his fellow pledges are urinated on during a naked mud-wrestling scene. Edward has sex with three different women (not explicit, but you see bodies moving), and a surveillance film showing two people having sex appears repeatedly. Characters smoke cigarettes frequently and drink, sometimes to excess. Some language (four uses of "f--k"). To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (1)

Based on 1 parent review

Dont let others choose whats right for your children

What's the story.

A complicated, fictionalized version of the birth of the CIA, THE GOOD SHEPHERD centers on CIA operative Edward Wilson ( Matt Damon ). Director Robert De Niro 's film cuts back and forth in time, showing how Edward came to be so dedicated to his job and how he pursues the traitor who spoiled the surprise of 1961's Bay of Pigs invasion. During WWII, Wilson winds up in London working for the Office of Strategic Services. He leaves behind his pregnant wife, Margaret ( Angelina Jolie ), becomes increasingly involved in his work, and discovers that lying, cheating, and murdering are necessary to protect borders and deceptions, as is the perpetual realigning of affinities. Recruited by CIA founder Bill Sullivan (De Niro), Edward believes that the group is solely (and nobly) interested in American values and identity, even though the group undertakes illegal, violent, racist, and hyper-nationalist operations. His wife complains that his devotion to national security distances him from his family, and indeed, it takes a heavy toll on his relationship with his son.

Is It Any Good?

This complex thriller considers the blindness and other costs that come with being too committed to a job, even one that involves national security. The problem that Edward's chosen profession poses for him is both prosaic and sensational. At one level, the cost of his patriotism is reduced to a common device -- the difficulties between father and son. The film winds tighter and tighter around this relationship. "I never felt safe," Edward Jr. says. "I was always afraid because everything was a secret."

While The Good Shepherd does concede that secret agencies need to keep secrets, it also rejects the slippery, paranoid morality that follows from such a premise.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the movies' fascination with espionage. Why are spy films so popular? How much of what we see on screen reflects reality, and how much is glamorized? What do you think a spy's day-to-day life is really like? Families can also discuss the lack of balance between family and career in Edward's life. How does his patriotism blind him to troubles at home and at work? How does the movie characterize the men who serve their country in this secret way? How does Edward and Margaret's social situation (especially their class) dictate and limit their options? What messages does the movie send about father-son relationships?

Movie Details

In theaters : December 22, 2006
On DVD or streaming : April 3, 2007
Cast : Angelina Jolie , Matt Damon , Michael Gambon
Director : Robert De Niro
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : Universal Pictures
Genre : Thriller
Run time : 160 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : some violence, sexuality and language.
Last updated : April 24, 2024

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\| \| \| \| • Fine direction, strong acting, script make very "Good Shepherd" • Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, career CIA operative • Film takes its time, but accumulates power (CNN) -- The two movies virtually intersect at one point (in Berlin, 1945), but don't confuse Robert De Niro's lengthy, absorbing spy drama "The Good Shepherd" with Steven Soderbergh's black-and-white throwback "The Good German." The overlap probably won't help either of them at the box office, and neither looks like a surefire hit in that department. But "Shepherd" deserves the chance. Yes, it's a reserved study in emotional detachment. Yes, it's a serious-minded history of the foundation of the CIA. And yes, it's nearly three hours long. These are not the ingredients of a contemporary blockbuster. Nor are the film's even pace, its oblique plotting and cryptic dialogue ("Rocking Chair is still smiling," says someone early on, which is about as on-the-nose as anyone gets). But, altogether, they make for a strong film. As spymaster Edward Wilson, Matt Damon is closer to a dedicated civil servant than he is to Jason Bourne -- or James Bond. Wilson wears glasses, reads poetry and spends most of his time behind a desk. He gives nothing away, listens closely, speaks minimally. His discretion is an obvious asset for a spy, but it's part of the point of the film that he was born and bred for the position: a WASP from a military family, he's inducted into the Skull and Bones secret society at Yale in 1939, and is persuaded that his poetry professor (Michael Gambon) is a fifth columnist soon afterwards. From there it's but a skip and a jump to OSS training in London during the Blitz; Berlin, where he vies with the Soviets to recruit the brightest Nazi scientists; and eventually the invitation to head up the counter-intelligence unit at the newly minted Central Intelligence Agency. "You shall know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free" reads the inscription beside the CIA building entrance at Langley, a sentiment that raises a rare smile when Wilson sees it. Truth proves almost impossible to divine in a Cold War landscape Wilson's historical counterpart James Jesus Angleton famously described as "the wilderness of mirrors." As for freedom, Wilson is so protective of the concept he scarcely notices how he's given up his personal liberty, sacrificing happiness and family for his country. He's an honorable man, but it's an open question whether such high principle is also a tragic flaw, even a kind of self-betrayal. Over 25 years, he will turn his back on the love of his life, do what is expected when a more appropriate blueblood (Angelina Jolie) becomes pregnant, and repeatedly fail his son in small ways and large. Screenwriter Eric Roth ("The Insider," "Forrest Gump") has said "The Good Shepherd" began with an attempted adaptation of Norman Mailer's 1,300-page novel "Harlot's Ghost" for director Francis Coppola. Twelve years and numerous false starts later, the movie still bears a marked resemblance to the "Godfather" films, not least for the dogged manner in which it entangles family and business, the personal and the political, even as Wilson struggles to keep them apart. The comparison is hardly to the new film's advantage (it sorely lacks regular eruptions of violence, for one thing), but the idea that men destroy themselves even as they build up empires is reinforced by these characters' power and privilege. The Corleone clan could only envy them. De Niro has directed one film before -- 1993's modest "A Bronx Tale" -- but he shows impressive command here, as well as ambition. (He has also been smart enough to get Robert Richardson as his cinematographer.) Beginning at a clip with the Bay of Pigs fiasco, then going back to Yale (and, briefly, to Wilson's childhood), the film draws an absorbing portrait of a conscientiously opaque, intensely private character. It is Matt Damon's most refined and mature performance to date. The stalwart supporting cast includes Billy Crudup as a British KGB mole, John Turturro, Joe Pesci, John Hurt, Alec Baldwin, Timothy Hutton and De Niro himself as the four-star general who sets up the CIA as an old boys' network for Yalies, but admits to profound misgivings the film obviously shares: counterespionage is at best a necessary evil. One character suggests that's only half true -- that the Cold War was a politically expedient sham. Angelina Jolie stands out because she's allowed to express the emotions the men have buried inside them, but in a strange way Wilson has closer relationships with two Soviet spies: a defector, Mironov (John Sessions), and his KGB opposite number, Siyanko, codename Ulysses (Oleg Stefan). Perhaps "The Good Shepherd's" discreet tone occasionally works against its possibilities; a couple of shoot-outs and a chase scene or two might have been welcome. But it's the patient delineation of sympathetic adversaries and untrustworthy friends that makes this such a thoroughly engrossing picture. "The Good Shepherd" does not lack for power. \| \| \| \|	E-mail Alerts

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Matt Damon plays CIA agent Edward Wilson, who puts the agency foremost in his life, in "The Good Shepherd."

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The Good Shepherd

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Robert De Niro, directing for the first time since 1993’s A Bronx Tale , has a grand ambition: to use one fictional character, Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), to tell the story of the CIA from its post-World War II roots to the botched Bay of Pigs mission in Cuba in 1961. Talk about biting off more than you can comfortably masticate, even at two and a half hours. But you have to admire De Niro’s moxie. He’s mounted a handsome production (Robert Richardson is a camera god), opted for facts instead of spy-flick clichés and cast it with heavyweights. Besides Damon, whose im-plosive quiet evokes Al Pacino in The Godfather II, there’s Angelina Jolie, wasted as his unhappy wife, and Alec Baldwin, William Hurt, John Turturro, Billy Crudup, Michael Gambon and De Niro himself as various operatives. I could go on, which is the problem. The film is stuffed with undeveloped characters far worthier of screen time than Edward’s domestic crises with his wife, deaf mistress (Tammy Blanchard) and resentful son (Eddie Redmayne). The film cuts back and forth from present to past, when Edward, as a 1939 Yale undergrad, is inducted into the secret Skull and Bones society and gets hooked on stealth. Shepherd wants to say something profound about the effect of a deceitful government on human values. But it’s tough to slog through a movie that has no pulse.

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Movie Review: The Good Shepherd (2006)

General Disdain
Movie Reviews
2 responses
--> January 23, 2007

Espionage flicks are the best. You get a big ‘ole dose of drama, a speck of thrilling action, a touch of violence and usually a dose or two of sex. But the best part of well thought out spy movie is that it forces us, the viewer, to try and figure out the story before it is completely told to us. It has been quite some time since a well thought out movie in this genre has surfaced — I wont count the latest James Bond movie, even though it is technically a spy movie (so please comment on any I’ve missed). It is because I love to critically think, that I so looked forward to The Good Shepherd .

This time around, the story revolves around Edward Wilson, a seemingly mild mannered guy, in the 1940s-1960s, as he learns his way through the spy game, ultimately anchoring the CIA and losing his family. Yeah, it’s been done before in some shape or form, but what sets The Good Shepherd apart from the others, is the story of the emotional and personal sacrifices given for God and Country. Trust no one — not your wife, best friends or children.

And to go along with the tale, Robert De Niro put himself together quite the cast of characters. Angelina Jolie, plays Margaret, aka Clover, a woman knocked up at an early age and married for sake of the child. She has a small role, but she actively captures the feelings of a woman scorned and left behind for a career. Alec Baldwin, Robert De Niro, William Hurt and Michael Gambon play smaller, intricate roles that help shape the actions of the main character — Edward Wilson. Matt Damon, reprises his recent role of the quiet, introverted and innerly troubled man (see “ The Departed ” or any of the Bourne series). Luckily, he plays these characters well, his facial expressions and body movements tell all the story necessary that his vocal chords don’t.

The story is moves rather slowly and is told from repeated flashbacks jumping from the 1960s to the 1940s to the 1960s to the 1940s — you get the idea. It can and does get a tad confusing as there are a great many time switches to contend with. Another drawback is the length of time, The Good Shepherd runs over 2.5 hours! That’s a serious amount of time to tell a story, that has a lot of downtime while setting up for a twist. The movie also claims to be loosely based on the true story of the birth of the Central Intelligence Agency — something I’m not completely sold on, as I’m sure De Niro used a great deal of creative liberty in this story.

Without a doubt The Good Shepherd is a well told, intricately woven story. Those of us who like a thinking man’s movie will do good to see it. Those of you in the “I want it now generation” should avoid this movie for two reasons:

Angelina Jolie doesn’t get naked and quite frankly, she doesn’t look particularly good here
You’d be bored to death — there aren’t any wicked action sequences to get the blood pumping

Tagged: CIA agent , Europe , spy

I'm an old, miserable fart set in his ways. Some of the things that bring a smile to my face are (in no particular order): Teenage back acne, the rain on my face, long walks on the beach and redneck women named Francis. Oh yeah, I like to watch and criticize movies.

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'Movie Review: The Good Shepherd (2006)' have 2 comments

January 25, 2007 @ 12:12 pm Mark

I tried to think of any recent espionage thrillers and the closest I could come up with was the movie “Thirteen Days” released in 2000. It’s not necessarily a spy movie, but it has the same cold war overtones.

By the way, Jolie is over-rated as an actress and as a sex symbol.

December 18, 2007 @ 4:08 am Tammy

The Good Shepherd was an excellent film, but there were a few small things that bugged me about it. First, Angelina Jolie, who played “Clover” did not show any sort of acting ability… she just used her smile and monotone voice the entire movie (with a few exceptions).

One of the extras shows up in the University scene and in a scene years later wearing the same clothes. The only reason I noticed this is because he is in a TV commercial I’ve seen a thousand times.

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The Good Shepherd

Using the life of a single secret agent to summarize more than 20 years of history-shaping skullduggery prior to the Bay of Pigs, The Good Shepherd was blessed/cursed with the rep of being too smart for its own good — ”one of those ‘great scripts that just can’t get made’ kind of things,” says Robert De Niro, directing for the first time since 1993’s A Bronx Tale . ”I’ve always been interested in spies, and I’ve been offered stories set in contemporary times. But I’m more interested in the Cold War, because that was the era I grew up in.”

In 2005, after years of cultivating Shepherd , De Niro was finally ready to roll with a reported $110 million budget, provided he cast a bankable lead. Enter Matt Damon. (That is, after Leonardo DiCaprio exited.) ”It’s like the president calling,” says Damon, who nervously told De Niro that, unfortunately, he was committed to Martin Scorsese’s The Departed and the Steven Soderbergh drama The Informant . ”Bob said, ‘I’ll talk to Marty if you talk to Steven,”’ says Damon. ”I went from saying ‘I’m honored, but I can’t’ to being signed very quickly.” Six months of shooting in New York, England, and the Dominican Republic produced an extraordinary amount of footage, not to mention a significant editing challenge for De Niro. ”It’s a little too early to say if I’m happy with it,” says the director. By the way, Damon says he and Soderbergh find the whole Good German / Good Shepherd overlap rather humorous: ”Steve says there needs to be a sequel — The Good German Shepherd .”

In a perverse way, Robert DeNiro's is as much about family and tribe as it is about the birth pangs of the Central Intelligence Agency. Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) is the son of a Navy admiral who killed himself because in some ambiguous way he had betrayed God, country and family. The stoic "incurably romantic" Wilson's life is in many ways a penance for the sins of the father. Later, Wilson's own son (Eddie Redmayne) follows his father's footsteps into the CIA with tragic consequences. His shortcomings and his father's promise to protect him create the dramatic dilemma at the film's core. Wilson's solution to the dilemma is reminiscent of Michael Corleone's ruthlessness in .

The film's seemingly flawless evocation of the 1950s is equally evocative of . Those of us old enough to remember the Fifties cannot avoid a sense of . Both films get things just right--down to the wallpaper and the curtains. No surprise then, that 's executive producers include Francis Ford Coppola, who directed the Godfather saga.

The Good Shepherd opens with the Bay of Pigs debacle. Damon's character is depicted as having a key role in the abortive 1961 invasion of Cuba. He quickly concludes that a leak near the top tipped Castro to the precise landing site. A counter intelligence specialist by long experience and personal preference, he heads down an investigative trail that inevitably leads to his own front door.

As Damon/Wilson's inquiry marches down its narrow, convoluted path, the film itself takes a quick turn, back to 1939, when Wilson was recruited first to Yale's top-secret Skull and Bones fraternity and from there into the new, nameless agency that would be World War II's OSS. DeNiro himself appears as General Bill Sullivan, aka Wild Bill Donovan. Sullivan's recruiting of Wilson takes just a five-minute conversation. The call from Sullivan to go to covert war subsequently comes as a set of orders delivered by a green lieutenant in the middle of Wilson's wedding reception. His already pregnant wife (Angelina Jolie) doesn't see him again for half a dozen years.

Those six years of counterintelligence work in England and post-war Berlin test Wilson's idealism, as he is forced to dispose of a disloyal lover and an unreliable mentor. Back home at last in 1947, he is once more recruited by good old General Sullivan, who is being whittled away by diabetes. "It's undignified to die from the feet up," he confides with a rueful chuckle to Wilson, who unhesitatingly signs on for the CIA.

Wilson's son, Edward Jr., who meets his daddy for the first time in '47, grows up in a living hell of fear, infidelity and secrecy. What does this atmosphere of official secrecy and marital deceit inspire him to do? Why, to become a spy just like the old man, of course. And like his father, he too is an incurable romantic whose professionalism and patriotism--same as dear old dad's--are compromised by the love of a woman.

Three hours of interwoven flashbacks and flash-forwards are more than enough to present the panoply of CIA sins. We witness the interrogation of a suspected double-agent, complete with LSD. We see grainy black-and-white footage of what LeCarre's George Smiley books call "a honey trap," a sordid blend of sex and stolen secrets in a shabby hotel room where a peephole camera records the lot. We are treated to the assassination of an old but now-unreliable colleague along the Thames embankment; the last we see of the poor devil is his cane bobbing in the river. And we observe the overthrow of the equally unreliable president of a Banana Republic.

The film's pace is slow. Damon's portrayal of the central (no pun intended) character is meticulous and masterful. The star-studded supporting cast is darned near letter perfect. Movie-goers who consider Casino Royale the epitome of the espionage genre won't sit through The Good Shepherd . But history buffs who like books such as Norman Mailer's Harlot's Ghost , another evocation of the birth of CIA, will adore this epic saga.

Near the end, Edward (never "Ed" in a million years) Wilson moves into his counterintelligence wing of the brand-new Langley headquarters. The agency's new director recalls for Wilson his recent Congressional testimony. "A Senator asked me, 'Why is it always CIA, never ' the CIA'? I asked him, you never put 'the' in front of 'God,' either, do you?"

CIA is not equivalent to God for Edwards, however. His philosophy comes through in a brief conversation with a Mafia don (Joe Pesci) he recruits by promising him protection from deportation.

"We Italians have family. The Jews have tradition. What do you people have?" Replies Edwards without hesitation, "We have the United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting."

In the end, this verity determines his course of conduct, as he moves to save family and honor with a single, ruthless act.

Rated R - For violence, sexuality and language.

Jim Castagnera, a Philadelphia journalist and lawyer, is the Associate Provost at Rider University and author of the weekly newspaper column Attorney at Large .

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The Good Shepherd (2006)

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Good Shepherd, The (United States, 2006)

The Good Shepherd is Robert DeNiro's fictionalized account of the birth and early years of the CIA. While the names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent, many of the characters have real-life counterparts. The lengthy movie (15 minutes shy of three hours) unspools like a cold war spy novel, with betrayals, double-crosses, triple-crosses, and fluid allegiances. The protagonist isn't the most sympathetic individual to reach the screen, but the vortex of moral and ethical uncertainties in which he becomes caught makes him an intriguing, although not likeable, individual.

Writers like Len Deighton and John Le Carre spent lifetimes introducing us to the tricks of the espionage trade from post-WWII Germany to the end of the Cold War. The Good Shepherd is very much cut from this mold, concentrating on the grunt work and cerebral analysis that forms the background of spying rather than on the ostentatious flourishes that cinema usually brings to the genre. While The Good Shepherd 's Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) is neither as multi-faceted or as engaging as either Smiley or Samson, he's a good focal point.

The film opens in April 1961 with a chronicle of events immediately before and after the Bay of Pigs debacle. As one of the few members of the CIA knowledgeable about this "dark" mission, Wilson is on the hot seat. Senator Philip Allen (William Hurt) has been charged with reporting directly to the President and he wants answers from Wilson. Because the specifics of the covert mission were so closely guarded, it is recognized that the leak came from someone highly placed. It's Wilson's responsibility to uncover the source of that leak. He gets some unexpected intelligence from an anonymously submitted, grainy surveillance photograph and a murky audio tape, both of which offer clues to the identity of the betrayer.

Much of The Good Shepherd is told in flashback. With 1961 used as a framing period, the film delves back into Wilson's history: his indoctrination into a secret society while at Yale; his relationship with a pretty, deaf co-ed, Laura (Tammy Blanchard); his ill-advised marriage to Clover (Angelina Jolie), who is pregnant with his son; his acceptance of an overseas post for the wartime OSS (Office of Strategic Services); his ascension to a position of power and influence in the CIA, which succeeds the OSS; and his cat-and-mouse games with Ulysses (Oleg Stefan), his KGB counterpart.

The story, written by Eric Roth, is ambitious, and De Niro gives it its due. The production is paced well enough that it doesn't seem to consume nearly three hours. There aren't a lot of "down" moments and the film doesn't threaten to bore. The slowest parts are near the beginning as we get to know the characters. Once the setup and introductions have been accomplished, The Good Shepherd moves with a quick, although not necessarily relentless, pace. Nevertheless, those who like more action and pyrotechnics from their spy movies (an affliction fed by the conventions of the James Bond movies) may find the film's slower, more real convolutions to be unsatisfying. This is a thriller, but it's a slow-burn one.

Wilson is played in a low-key manner by Matt Damon, who makes sure this personality is as far as humanly possible from Jason Bourne. Bespectacled and wearing a perfectly tailored business suit and hat, Wilson is the picture of any young executive from the '40s and '50s. He's an upright person of good character whose primary driving force is his patriotism. The character doesn't exhibit a strong arc but must face a series of moral and ethical dilemmas. The biggest of these occurs near the end (or the beginning, considering that the movie uses a wrap-around narrative style). Even after a series of ethically stressful events, Wilson maintains his position of staunch patriotism, but one has to wonder… Does he still believe in his country, or is the alternative too bleak to consider? If he repudiates his long-held values, does that mean his entire life has been meaningless and his sacrifices - which have been numerous - have been pointless?

This isn't Damon's most emotive performance, but he's effective in an "everyman" way. Wilson is smart and calculating, but he's not a superman. Damon is the glue that holds the movie together since he's the only actor deserving to be called a "lead." Everyone else falls into the supporting category. Angelina Jolie, Tammy Blanchard, and William Hurt have a fair amount of screen time. On the other hand, luminaries like Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Alec Baldwin, and Michael Gambon are in only a handful of scenes. There are times when The Good Shepherd feels a little like "spot the star." I guess there was a lot of interest in this project, especially with De Niro attached as director.

The film's accuracy is open to question, in large part because the CIA isn't forthcoming about aspects of its history. As a result, there's fictionalization and conjecture mingled with fact. It may not pass the muster for a text book, but it makes for compelling and sometimes suspenseful viewing. Some of the most tense scenes are those that pit Wilson against his arch-nemesis, the Russian superspy Ulysses. (That's his code name.) These exchanges are always cordial but there's an underlying sense of menace.

In addition to the Wilson/Ulysses interactions, The Good Shepherd excels during those sequences during which Wilson and his associates work to decode and analyze the clues provided by the mysterious photograph and audio tape. We see the puzzle unfold until the final piece snaps into place. This process provides us with a window into the kind of painstaking manual work that was involved before the advent of computers and the Internet.

The Good Shepherd is equally fascinating as a character drama and as a cold war thriller. Wilson, purportedly a composite of two real individuals - James Jesus Angleton, a former director of the CIA's counter-intelligence staff, and Richard Bissell, a covert operations specialist – is an intriguing personality, even though his actions are usually predictable. The story of the CIA is less political than one might suppose. There are occasional comments about the dangers of a secret organization ("I want this… to be the eyes and ears of our country, not the heart and soul"), but the movie does not have an anti-spy/intelligence agenda. The bottom line is that The Good Shepherd is engaging cinema. The length is a drawback, but not a big one since the movie earns the majority of its 165-minute running time. De Niro pulls the viewer into the world he has created and holds him there, sometimes spellbound, until the story is over and the end credits roll.

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Fight Club (1999)
In the Company of Men (1997)
Apollo 13 (1995)
Cosmopolis (2012)
Cruel Intentions (1999)
Bad Lieutenant (1993)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Courage Under Fire (1996)
Interstellar (2014)
Suburbicon (2017)
Promised Land (2012)
Great Wall, The (2017)
(There are no more better movies of John Turturro Tammy Blanchard)
(There are no more worst movies of John Turturro Tammy Blanchard)
Into the Wild (2007)
Syriana (2005)
Body Heat (1981)
Yellow Handkerchief, The (2010)
Host, The (2013)
Winter's Tale (2014)

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The Good Shepherd Reviews

It's a nice looking wintry crime drama involving a gay priest accused of murder that turns icy as the story goes into a skid and never recovers.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Mar 9, 2009

all but done in by a staggering one-two punch of awfulness

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 24, 2006

'Yudhra' movie review: An underwhelming thriller with good action blocks

Excel Entertainment films are known for bringing Western sensibilities to Bollywood. Films such as Dil Chahta Hai , Don , Rock On!! , and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara are as Indian in terms of their substance as they are Western in terms of style (and flavour). The aforementioned films are made by and for those who have access to international culture, even though they are rooted in Indian sensibilities. Bring in Shridhar Raghavan, the writer of great action films like Khakee and War , and we should have gotten a well-rounded action entertainer from Excel Entertainment that ably combines solid action set pieces with emotionally resonant moments. Sadly, however, that is not the case with Yudhra . The film is a mess in terms of writing.

A long character set-up for Yudhra (Siddhant Chaturvedi), a man who can’t help but get mad, should have led to moments where we feel terrified of his ability to easily lose his cool. Moments where, because of his temper, Yudhra makes a hasty decision. Looking at him, his part-father figure Rehman Siddiqui (Ram Kapoor) says, “Inko khatron se khelna pasand hai.” However, after some time into the first half, this trait is barely existent—the man in fact seems pretty calculative and well-planned.

In a larger-than-life actioner, logic doesn’t really matter that much if the characters and their actions are convincing; it wouldn’t matter if the hero has the secret ability to flap his wings and fly. However, some of the writing decisions in Yudhra just don’t make sense. Why travel to Portugal to save a girl from the bad guys, only to just let her travel alone? Of all the ways to assassinate a dreaded don who has long been evasive, why come up with the done-to-death plan of killing him during a cruise party? Why not write scenes that show how much the characters mean to each other rather than just having random lines like “Today is dad’s birthday, I really miss him”? The latter point might not apply to a slick, no-nonsense actioner, but Yudhra wants to be so much more.

There are parts that work well, though. Despite quick cutaways, the action set pieces have vigour and some good imagination. A sewing machine used to stitch the hands of a goon together so that he always looks like he is pleading. A flute getting pierced into a throat and making sounds when the person chokes. These are well thought-through elements with a sense of slickness that is missing in the rest of the film. The dialogues by Farhan Akhtar make the scenes more interesting than they actually are on paper. When Rehman tells Yudhra that his dad had an anger issue too, he remarks, “Will the judge give me a shorter term if we tell I have a genetic problem?” The background score by Sanchit Balhara and Ankit Balhara is perfectly sinister. And the cinematography by Jay Pinak Oza is sensational. There is a deep, saturated tone throughout that lends more intensity to the scenes than the characters themselves do.

The other big issue, apart from the writing, is that the film lacks memorable performances. Siddhant Chaturvedi looks the part, but he needed to have brought more insanity to his character, Yudhra. Without a maniac-like treatment, the character comes across as just a prick, being purposefully rude to people (until miraculously changing into a good guy later, because, well, he is the hero). Raghav Juyal should have been given way more than ‘wears colourful clothes’. The rest of the actors are all equally flat, with no chemistry between one another.

In the end, Yudhra feels like a missed opportunity. It struggles to find a footing, lingering in the 'somewhat entertaining’ zone. Two terribly placed songs, an unnecessarily stretched romantic angle, needless jumps from one location to another—it all ends up half baked. I left the theatre wishing they had much more of the action portions. Or should I say Kill Chahta Hai ?

Film: Yudhra

Director: Ravi Udyawar

Cast: Raghav Juyal, Malavika Mohanan, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Shilpa Shukla.

Rating: 2.5/5

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Triptii Dimri on Animal criticism: Cinema lets us explore the good, bad and ugly

Actor triptii dimri recently opened up about being cast in sandeep reddy vanga's animal. at the india today mumbai conclave 2024, she also discussed the criticism her character, zoya, faced after the film released..

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Triptii Dimri discussed her role in Animal at India Today Mumbai Conclave 2024
She opened about the criticism her character faced after the film's release
She defended her character, Zoya

Actor Triptii Dimri recently opened up about being cast in Sandeep Reddy Vanga's film Animal and the criticism the film faced post release. The actor, who gained a different fandom after appearing as Zoya in the 2023 film, attended the India Today Mumbai Conclave 2024 on Wednesday, September 25, where she spoke about why she chose to star in the Ranbir Kapoor-starrer and her reception to the film's criticism.

Triptii spoke at a session titled 'Struggles to Stardom: The Untold Story of My Bollywood Breakthrough'. Opening up about her decision to feature in Animal and playing the role of Zoya, Triptii Dimri said, "For me, I don't like staying in my comfort zone. With Bulbbul and Qala, I found that comfort, and while I love drama, being on those sets always energised me. However, when Animal came along, I found it truly challenging."

She continued to explain, "As an actor, it's important to take on something that pushes you. Every time I get a role, I feel like it's both scary and challenging. That's exactly how I felt when Sandeep Sir explained Zoya's character to me. She seemed both brave and innocent at the same time, and that excited me. I’m always looking for roles that offer something different."

Addressing the criticism her character drew from the viewers, Triptii Dimri said, "I would approach Zoya's character exactly the same way I did. As humans, we all have different shades—good, bad, and even ugly. I feel that films allow us to explore these sides. Acting lets us experience a wide range of emotions, and I consider actors lucky because we get to live through so many different experiences in one lifetime."

Screen Rant

Hugh grant & heretic team talk exploring mormonism through a horror lens [tiff].

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Heretic Review: Hugh Grant Has Never Been So Good In Intoxicating Religious Horror Thriller [TIFF]

Rey skywalker's new jedi order should be inspired by one unforgettable five-year-old story, "we came very close": why shanghai noon 3 never happened & story details revealed by screenwriter.

A24's religious horror movie Heretic had its Toronto International Film Festival premiere earlier this month, and Screen Rant was on hand to speak with the minds behind the story. Written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who are best known as the creators of A Quiet Place , the movie follows two young Mormon women whose lives are changed forever when they enter the home of a seemingly polite yet ultimately very strange man.

Heretic stars The Fabelmans ' Chloe East as Sister Paxton and Sophie Thatcher as Sister Barnes, who are going door to door preaching about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when they are invited inside by Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant). While he seems hospitable at first, engaging them in fascinating theological debate, things soon take a turn for the frightening when he refuses to let them leave.

Hugh Grant as Mr. Reed holding a candle in Heretic

It’s an intoxicating story setup that leads to a striking final act.

Screen Rant interviewed the stars and directors of Heretic on the TIFF 2024 red carpet, discussing questions of faith and philosophy that went into the making of the horror film. Beck and Woods also shared their take on A Quiet Place sequels, while Grant hinted at a very interesting Bridget Jones theory and Thatcher answered her first question about Yellowjackets season 3.

Heretic Filmmakers Address The Possibility Of Returning To The World Of A Quiet Place

"we love sequels and remakes as much as anyone, but...".

Screen Rant: I'm so excited for Heretic , and the trailer alone had me on the edge of my seat. And, of course, your pedigree speaks for itself. At what point in your process do you know you have a hit on your hands?

Scott Beck: I don't know. It's one of those things where I think there's two of us, and so we used the shared brain to try and pressure test any idea we have. Whether it's A Quiet Place, which was an idea that was stuck in a drawer for a long time, and we pulled it out and were like, "I still feel like there's something there," or Heretic, where it's a movie that was based on conversations that we had over the course of decades about religion and the occult. What happens when you die? I think for us it's always about a sticky idea that sticks around. Bryan Woods: Yeah, this one is about all of our deepest, darkest fears as it relates to what happens when we die, and our anxiety about the fact that there are so many different religions on planet Earth, many of which are beautiful. And this kind of lingering question of, "What is the one true religion, and what does it mean to believe or not believe?" The movie's examining all of these things. It's a conversation about these things that are really meaningful to us, and we're just so grateful that we had this amazing cast come together because they were so in tune with the conversation. We just couldn't be happier.

Screen Rant: With A Quiet Place , you've set a whole universe in motion. Is that a world you'd ever return to with your own pen, or are you letting it grow on its own?

Scott Beck: That's a great question. I mean, I would never rule it out, but at the same time, I think what we're always invigorated by is finding the next original story. Before A Quiet Place was born , we were so excited to be able to tell the story of a family in the Heartland where we're from, from Iowa. And Heretic was born from that same instinct. While there could always be an option, there are so many ideas that we're excited about that are original. Bryan Woods: Yeah, we love sequels and remakes as much as anyone, but we kind of miss that era of movie-going where the big hit movies of every year were these things you had never heard of before. It's such a privilege to be able to create something and throw new ideas against the wall. The studio that made Heretic, A24, is so amazing at taking big swings and investing in original ideas. They're just amazing apartments.

Source: Screen Rant Plus

Hugh Grant Reveals The Theological Debates That Surprised Him Most In Heretic

"a lot of the basic tenets of christianity were not really new.".

Screen Rant: I know there's a lot of heavy theological debate in Heretic , and there seems to have been a lot of real-life consideration of Mormonism. Was there anything that surprised you most or that you found most interesting when it came to the religious aspect?

Hugh Grant: There were some arguments my character makes in this film that were new to me. The guys who wrote and directed it came up with some fascinating research about the fact that a lot of the basic tenets of Christianity were not really new. Saviors born of a virgin baptized in rivers that performed miracles had actually been around in many religions and cults for thousands of years before Christ came along. I was very interested by that.

Screen Rant: I'm also very excited about Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy . How does it feel to have another shot at Bridget without Mark Darcy around?

Hugh Grant: I'm not convinced that he's not in it. I think they're hiding something.

Heretic's Chloe East Praises Hugh Grant As Costar & Mentor

"he was just always there and present and always connected.".

Screen Rant: This movie deals with Mormonism, but some very real-world research has gone into it What was it like stepping into a character so close to you?

Chloe East: So many times you see Mormon missionaries in movies as the butt of the joke, not real humans. I really wanted to represent a real sister missionary. I had friends on missions while we were shooting, and I was texting them like, "Is this accurate? Is this accurate? Give me a scripture to read." And so, I almost felt responsible. I wanted to protect the missionaries out there. I just wanted a really true depiction. This movie took me on a ride, on a ride. It was the most exhausting movie I've ever done. Mentally, physically... But everything was so worth it because I've seen the movie. I love the movie, but it was tough.

Screen Rant: How tough was it working opposite Hugh Grant? I imagine that's a bit of an awe-inspiring moment.

Chloe East: Yes, he was amazing. He really is amazing. Such a talented actor. Obviously, I don't even need to say that, but it was really nice to not have to force anything. He was just always there and present and always connected, and so you didn't really have to worry about the scene or really beating off of anything. It was just there. And you could focus on where the script is and what our characters are trying to say.

Heretic Star Sophie Thatcher Teases Yellowjackets Season 3 Without Juliette Lewis

"there's just this darkness, and an empty void, which is really sad.".

Screen Rant: What was your way into Sister Barnes and her relationship to her faith?

Sophie Thatcher: It was interesting. Sister Barnes feels like a younger version of myself. I felt a lot more shy and a little bit more reserved, so it was kind of tapping into a younger version of myself, but then also the normal character work that you do with any [role]. Because it's been a while. It's been like 10 years since I was that age, but a lot of my family is still Mormon, so I was just asking a lot of questions. Chloe, who's my co-star, has a lot of friends who are still Mormon, so it was just about keeping tabs and figuring out what is the most realistic portrayal without it being a caricature or a joke.

Screen Rant: What was your favorite memory from set, with or without Hug Grant?

Sophie Thatcher: I'm going to say my favorite memory. We talk about Taco Bell in the movie, and I love Taco Bell. I have this monologue about Taco Bell - a very dramatic monologue - and the directors brought Taco Bell. I was like, "Oh, that's such a sweet thing. Of course you did." I mean, it was a very sweet moment. It was a very full turnaround.

Screen Rant: I'm also excited for season 3 of Yellowjackets . How does it feel, for you as an actor, to play young Natalie when we now know what occurs to her?

Sophie Thatcher: Yeah, that's interesting. I haven't been asked that yet. I haven't done press for Yellowjackets yet. It feels like there's freedom to it. I feel like there's an inherent darkness, even though it wasn't her killing herself. There's just this darkness, and an empty void, which is really sad. But Juliette [Lewis] is always in the back of my mind and kind of in me at this point. I've done it for two seasons, so it feels like - it sounds crazy - but she's in me.

More About Heretic (2024)

Sister Paxton (Chloe East, TIFF ’22’s The Fabelmans) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher, Yellowjackets) are cheerfully going about their mission to spread good news about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Working down a list of doors to knock on, they arrive at the quiet suburban house of Mr. Reed (Grant), who seems not only polite and hospitable but also genuinely fascinated by the history and teachings of Mormonism.

In fact, Mr. Reed is quite knowledgeable about all the world’s major religions and is eager to discuss them with the women. Perhaps too eager. With the rain coming down outside and Mr. Reed’s wife making pie in the next room, the setting is utterly cozy. The only thing that could spoil it would be if Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes wanted to leave.

Check out our other TIFF 2024 interviews here:

Hyun Bin ( Harbin )
Andrew Garfield ( We Live In Time )
Grace VanderWaal ( Megalopolis )
William Goldenberg, Anthony Robles & Don Cheadle ( Unstoppable )
Caitriona Balfe, John Turturro & More ( The Cut )
Barry Keoghan & Nykiya Adams ( Bird )
Chris Sanders ( The Wild Robot )
Janson Siblings & Leland Douglas ( Nutcrackers )
Lily McInerny, Claes Bang, & Aliocha Schneider (Bonjour Tristesse)
Brandon Routh, Malina Weissman, Mena Suvari, and Joseph Kahn (Ick)
Mike Flanagan & Taylor Gordon (The Life of Chuck)
Amy Adams, Archana Rajan & Marielle Heller ( Nightbitch )

Heretic premiered at TIFF on September 8 and arrives in theaters on November 8.

Two young women of faith are drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse after seeking refuge in the house of a mysterious and unsettling man. As they navigate a labyrinth of psychological and supernatural horrors, their beliefs and survival instincts are pushed to the limit.

COMMENTS

Secrets without mysteries movie review (2006)
Secrets without mysteries. Action. 167 minutes ‧ R ‧ 2006. Jim Emerson. December 21, 2006. 5 min read. Matt Damon and Alec Baldwin in "The Good Shepherd." It's not their fault. If you think George Tenet's Central Intelligence Agency was a disaster, wait until you see Robert De Niro's torpid, ineffectual movie about the history of the ...
The Good Shepherd
The Good Shepherd. NEW. Discreet, idealistic and intensely loyal, Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) finds that service in the OSS and later as a founding member of the Central Intelligence Agency is the ...
The Good Shepherd
Directed by Robert De Niro. Drama, History, Thriller. R. 2h 47m. By Manohla Dargis. Dec. 22, 2006. "The Good Shepherd," a chilly film about a spy trapped in the cold of his own heart, seeks to ...
The Good Shepherd (2006)
The Good Shepherd: Directed by Robert De Niro. With Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, Tammy Blanchard. The tumultuous early history of the Central Intelligence Agency is viewed through the prism of one man's life.
The Good Shepherd (2006)
The Good Shepherd 3.5/4 4/5. The Good Shepherd is an incredibly complex work and one of the finest films of a quality ripe 2006. Oscar winner Eric Roth continues his brilliant work with this original screenplay, named one of the best unproduced scripts in Hollywood in the late 90's. A film about one of the CIA's founding officers isn't a dream ...
The Good Shepherd (film)
The Good Shepherd is a 2006 American spy film produced and directed by Robert De Niro and starring Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, and De Niro, with an extensive supporting cast.Although it is fictional, loosely based on events in the life of James Jesus Angleton, it is advertised as telling the history of the birth of counterintelligence in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The Good Shepherd Reviews
Alexander_Fred. Dec 8, 2011. The Good Shepherd is very much a difficult film to understand. At first glance, it is over 2 and a half hours of boring, sluggish history tracing the early history of counterintelligence within the CIA. But upon second glance, the film emerges as something quite different.
The Good Shepherd
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 6, 2019. Nick Rogers Midwest Film Journal. As a punishingly ambiguous and astonishingly thorough tragedy, "The Good Shepherd" shows that emotions as human ...
The Good Shepherd Review
The Good Shepherd, in which De Niro takes only a vivid acting cameo as the patriotic but ethical General Bill Sullivan, is the kind of Big Picture, using a great chunk of 20th century history to ...
The Good Shepherd (2006)
The Good Shepherd. One of the most impressive movies ever made about espionage. De Niro pulls the viewer into the world he has created and holds him there, sometimes spellbound, until the story is over and the end credits roll. While a bit unwieldy at nearly three hours and at times slow going, the film is absolutely fascinating for anyone who ...
The Good Shepherd
Now in his 20s, Edward is emotionally controlled, detail-oriented, patriotic, and a perfect candidate for the secrecy and duplicity of intelligence work. His one emotional attachment is to a deaf girl, a fellow student at Yale. However, when a one-night stand with his best friend's sister leads to her pregnancy, a quick wedding follows.
The Good Shepherd Movie Review
Parents say: (1 ): Kids say: Not yet rated Rate movie. This complex thriller considers the blindness and other costs that come with being too committed to a job, even one that involves national security. The problem that Edward's chosen profession poses for him is both prosaic and sensational. At one level, the cost of his patriotism is reduced ...
Review: A great 'Good Shepherd'
The two movies virtually intersect at one point (in Berlin, 1945), but don't confuse Robert De Niro's lengthy, absorbing spy drama "The Good Shepherd" with Steven Soderbergh's black-and-white ...
The Good Shepherd
The Good Shepherd. Robert De Niro, directing for the first time since 1993's A Bronx Tale, has a grand ambition: to use one fictional character, Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), to tell the story of ...
Movie Review: The Good Shepherd (2006)
The story is moves rather slowly and is told from repeated flashbacks jumping from the 1960s to the 1940s to the 1960s to the 1940s — you get the idea. It can and does get a tad confusing as there are a great many time switches to contend with. Another drawback is the length of time, The Good Shepherd runs over 2.5 hours!
The Good Shepherd
In 2005, after years of cultivating Shepherd, De Niro was finally ready to roll with a reported $110 million budget, provided he cast a bankable lead.Enter Matt Damon. (That is, after Leonardo ...
The Good Shepherd
Rated 3/5 Stars • Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/26/23 Full Review Audience Member I sat down to watch this movie because I thought it was The Good Shepherd movie with Matt Damon but I was wrong. But ...
The History Place
The Good Shepherd. By Jim Castagnera Special to The History Place 1/2/07. In a perverse way, Robert DeNiro's The Good Shepherd is as much about family and tribe as it is about the birth pangs of the Central Intelligence Agency. Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) is the son of a Navy admiral who killed himself because in some ambiguous way he had betrayed God, country and family.
The Good Shepherd (2006)
R 2 hr 47 min Dec 11th, 2006 History, Drama, Thriller. Edward Wilson, the only witness to his father's suicide and member of the Skull and Bones Society while a student at Yale, is a morally ...
Good Shepherd, The
A movie review by James Berardinelli. The Good Shepherd is Robert DeNiro's fictionalized account of the birth and early years of the CIA. While the names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent, many of the characters have real-life counterparts. The lengthy movie (15 minutes shy of three hours) unspools like a cold war spy novel, with ...
Discussion on The Good Shepherd (2006) : r/movies
Discussion on The Good Shepherd (2006) I am fan of movies like The Departed, The Jackal, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor. I am also beginning to go through John le Carré novels. So The Good Shepherd I believe is one of those movies that the average movie goer would not appreciate. Many would say it is long and boring and difficult to understand.
The Good Shepherd
The Good Shepherd is a movie like finest crystal: it is breathtaking and gorgeous and made by skilled craftsmen, but it falls into tiny useless pieces the instant you give it a good whack. Was that an overly precious metaphor? God, it totally was. And kind of useless. Nobody whacks crystal. And obviously, nobody gave The Good Shepherd a good whack at any time during production, because this is ...
10 John Wayne Westerns No One Ever Talks About
In Cahill U.S. Marshal, Wayne plays J.D. Cahill, a tough lawman who struggles to maintain order while raising his two rebellious sons.When his boys fall in with a gang of outlaws, Cahill must face ...
The Good Shepherd
The Good Shepherd Reviews. It's a nice looking wintry crime drama involving a gay priest accused of murder that turns icy as the story goes into a skid and never recovers. Full Review | Original ...
'Yudhra' movie review: An underwhelming thriller with good action blocks
Excel Entertainment films are known for bringing Western sensibilities to Bollywood. Films such as Dil Chahta Hai, Don, Rock On!!, and 
'Nice Girls' Netflix Review: Stream It Or Skip It?
The title Nice Girls (now streaming on Netflix) is a play on words, since it's a French movie set in Nice, and it's about girls. Well, women. Policewomen, to be precise. The postcard city on ...
Triptii Dimri on Animal criticism: Cinema lets us explore the good, bad
As humans, we all have different shades—good, bad, and even ugly. I feel that films allow us to explore these sides. Acting lets us experience a wide range of emotions, and I consider actors lucky because we get to live through so many different experiences in one lifetime." The 30-year-old actor was last seen in Bad Newz, co-starring Vicky ...
Hugh Grant & Heretic Team Talk Exploring Mormonism Through A Horror
A24's religious horror movie Heretic had its Toronto International Film Festival premiere earlier this month, and Screen Rant was on hand to speak with the minds behind the story. Written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who are best known as the creators of A Quiet Place, the movie follows two young Mormon women whose lives are changed forever when they enter the home of a ...

Secrets without mysteries

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Marathon Man

The Good Shepherd