DVD Review: The Good Shepherd

Director Robert De Niro takes us behind the scenes of the Central Intelligence Agency or maybe you’d know it better as the CIA. The origins of the agency are traced as we follow the events of a particular agent.

1961 – Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) is planning the Bay of Pigs invasion to try and oust Fidel Castro from Cuba. The operation fails and soon a film of someone appearing to betray the invasion to their lover who happens to be an agent for the opposing side is delivered to Edward. We see Edward in 1939 joining the Skull & Bones society and having to share the secret of his father’s (Timothy Hutton) suicide. We then begin a series of flashbacks that follow Edward at various stages in his life and CIA career.

He then has a poetry professor named Dr. Fredericks (Michael Gambon) that FBI agent Sam Murach (Alec Baldwin) asks him to spy on. He also finds love in the form of deaf student Laura (Tammy Blanchard). In the 1940s, we see him meeting Clover Russell (Angelina Jolie) at a Skull & Bones retreat on Deer Island. Circumstances will force him to leave Laura and marry Clover. It’s on Deer Island that he first meets Gen. Bill Sullivan (Robert De Niro) who will in later years bring him into the newly formed CIA. Edward spends the 1940s, during World War II, in England with Ray Brocco (John Turturro) who will become his right hand man in the agency. He also learns some hard truths of the espionage business from an unexpected source in England. The tale weaves in and out of Edward’s life and the final revelation of who is on the mysterious tape that was secreted to him will rock the foundations of his beliefs. De Niro populates the film with roles and cameos from a roster of Hollywood talent, including Billy Crudup, William Hurt, and Joe Pesci. The Good Shepherd has been a pet project for Robert De Niro for at least nine years. Matt Damon plays Wilson as a stoic, secretive man. Some might think that he’s phoning in the performance but I think that he does a masterful job at adding complexity to this man who really can’t let anyone into his world.I was most impressed in the way that the CIA technicians dismantle every bit of the film that Edward gets and eventually can even name the brand of ceiling fan present in the room. The world of spies is not a happy one and is fraught with problems not only for those doing the spying but the families that they leave behind.

De Niro and screenwriter Eric Roth do a good job in showing that this is not the world of James Bond. You don’t know who to trust and even if you think you do you often find that you were wrong about being able to put your trust in that person. The film is pretty long and nears 3 hours so you may want to block out some time for it, but I found it very good and reminiscent of Martin Ritt’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. That film also showed us the ugly side of the spy and the job they’ve chosen that will eventually eat them alive. Both films seem to be saying that there’s no happy ending in the spy world. It’s dark, dirty, gritty, and there are no Aston Martins, exotic locations, vodka martinis (shaken not stirred), and Bond girls to sate the appetites of our real world spies. Your reward is sometimes a sticky end and disillusionment. The Good Shepherd is presented in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) and enhanced for 16x9 televisions. A fullscreen version is available separately. Special features include 15 minutes of deleted scenes. The scenes include a whole subplot about Clover’s brother John (Gabriel Macht) being more involved in espionage. There’s also an alternate version of a reveal about a character played by John Sessions that works better and more suspenseful the way that it was done in the actual movie than in this deleted scene. Sadly, that’s all, no director’s commentary or the like. I hope that De Niro returns to the project one day and records a commentary or interview. The Good Shepherd is a fine film from someone who is usually in front of the camera. De Niro crafts a serpentine thriller around the mysterious agency and an amalgamation of several agents to give us a character to hang our journey on. Matt Damon actually gives a very good performance, in my opinion, and the film is one that is well worth watching.