The Good Shepherd

Starring: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, Billy Crudup, Robert De Niro, Keir Dullea, Michael Gambon, William Hurt, Timothy Hutton, Joe Pesci, John Turturo

Written by: Eric Roth

Directed by: Robert De Niro

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Rated: R

The product of ten years incubation with director Robert De Niro, The Good Shepherd is a long, slow shadowy march from beginning to end. Matt Damon plays fictional CIA man Edward Wilson. Through a myriad scenes scattered throughout the middle of the last century, we see Wilson’s life lead him through a series of mysterious organizations. While a student at Yale, he joins the Skull and Bones society. After graduation, he enters service with the OSS at the outset of World War II to run counter-intelligence operations. World War II ends and he finds himself doing counter-intelligence for the CIA. His dedication to his job stains relations with his wife Margaret (Angelina Jolie) and his eerily silent son (Gabriel Macht).

Sadly, none of this is quite as interesting as it should be. De Niro (who it’s probably safe to assume is a phenomenal actor’s director) delivers the story with a million shades of subtlety, but it doesn’t really matter as none of it is particularly compelling. The story slides across the screen with the practiced, disciplined emotional detachment of Damon in the role of Wilson. Wilson (based in part on real-life CIA founder officer James Angleton) got to be successful by being calm, trusting no one and keeping secrets.

Damon plays the role splendidly. He seems to be channeling the cool, dry low-metabolic sedation of Keanu Reeves for the role. He allows just enough edge into the character to let you know he isn’t entirely inhuman and emotionless but with him as the central focus of the entire film, the story can’t help but be drearily low key. De Niro provides endless amounts of time to mull over what little he’s introducing into the story. When plot points DO enter the frame, it’s easy to miss them in the slow miasmic drone that is the rest of the film. It’s worth seeing, but it’s a film that may lend itself better to DVD, where it can be watched in a series of segments that better compliment the attention span.

I should probably reveal at this point in the review that the film is 2 hours and 40 minutes long. The reason why I point this out is . . . I don’t know, maybe you have things you need to get done. Very few directors can legitimately produce films of that length without seeming too over indulgent. Scorcese, Coppola (and even Peter Jackson on occasion) can get away with a film that lasts one-eighth of an entire day, but they are considerably more experienced behind the lens than De Niro is. The Good Shepherd’s pacing ceaselessly drowns its plot in mood.

One leaves the theatre feeling that he or she probably saw a pretty good film as there are some really good performances here inhabiting the shadows of the plot. John Turturro was particularly good as Wilson’s assistant. The scene where he meets Wilson for the first time is brilliant. Somewhere in there, Mark Ivanir plays someone who just might be a Russian agent named Valentin Mironov. He’s bloodied and blistered at the cerebral cortex from torture and the LSD that the CIA was using as a “truth serum” ages ago. He delivers a very moving monologue about the U.S.’s role in creating a threat out of the Soviet Union in order to prop up the military industrial complex. Then he jumps out a window. This is chilling, moving cinematic drama. Too bad it’s lost in such a big film. VS