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The Good Shepherd - Kenji - 10-21-2007
After I saw THE INVASION, I also saw "THE GOOD SHEPHERD".
Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, Robert De Niro, William Hurt, and.....Joe Pesci. Joe Pesci?! Where have you been?!
The movie had excellent actors and actresses, but story was flat. It hadn't undulations at all. Just one word "Boring".
"Skull and Bones" really existed? One day I saw the movie, "The Skulls". I thought it was a fiction. Interesting...
The Good Shepherd - Maggers - 10-21-2007
Our tastes in films are different, Kenji, but that's what makes the world go round.
Here's my review which I posted on this board back when I saw the film in the theater:
I recommend "The Good Shepherd," a somewhat flawed telling of the creation of the CIA. It is overly long. I was aware of the length of the film as I watched it, which is not a good sign. But, in spite of its length, I was pulled in and it didn't let me go. Given that the story is about a cold, tight-lipped, unfeeling character with an absence of morals who helped co-create the CIA, it's a testament to DeNiro's direction that I remained interested.
Matt Damon managed to find some slight wiggle room within his tightly buttoned down performance, so that while his character gives away nothing, we are able to see something working within. What we see is not pleasant. He's a man so dedicated to his job and his sense of protecting America for Americans and from anyone else, that he's absolutely at ease with needing to give up his family and all close ties. In fact, any close tie becomes a liability in his trade, and throughout the movie I was filled with foreboding about what would happen to anyone in Damon's life.
What little openess there is in Damon's character (a tragic incident early in his life sets him up as a secret keeper) becomes increasingly pinched as his circle of trust decreases until he has only himself in his closed off, emotionally truncated world. What a horrible way to live. He's warned to get out while he still has a soul.
There are cameos galore, Keir Dullea, for instance (whom I haven't seen in years) plays Angelina Jolie's father, a role with no lines. Jolie is miscast but does what she can with her underwritten character. I've become very fond of watching Alec Baldwin and William Hurt in juicy supporting roles, and I was rewarded in this film.
The movie is set up as a series of flashbacks taking place from the vantage point of Spring, 1961 and the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Many reviewers have written that the flashbacks were disorienting and unnecessary. I didn't think so. You do have to stay alert to follow the film, but what's the problem with that?
Damon's character is known as "Mother" to the Russians. His Russian counterpart is known as "Ulysses" to the Americans. Their relationship over the years is the best part of the film. Interestingly, neither one ages over the 20+ years covered in the film. Everyone else does, but not those two.
The CIA seems to have had its beginnings in the Skull and Bones Society, a super secret fraternity at Yale based in homoerotic hazings and a profound sense of WASP superiority. In fact, I actually had the thought that all those white guys looked alike. There is a great line that Damon says to Joe Pesci's Italian mob character whom Damon is trying to recruit to help him prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion. I won't repeat the line here so you'll hear it fresh should you see the film. But suffice it to say, Damon's character is driven to do what he does buttressed by the thought that America really belongs to him and his fellow WASPs.
It's a long, dark, cold film about a cold, dark subject peopled with cold, dark hearted characters. Overall, I think it succeeds.
The Good Shepherd - saynomore - 10-24-2007
Like The Godfather, The Good Shepherd was layered with covert meaning (the passing of the dollar bills, for instance). Innocent actions are thick with secret intentions. And all these secrets come to fruitation in the final scenes, just as with the assassination scenes at the finale of The Godfather. This movie needs to be seen as a set-up to the ending. Watch as you see Matt Damon unfurl his disguised plan. He brings all his enemies and some close friends down in the end, and he is feared by all (note his friend's little speech as he shows him his new department in the new CIA building). Once you see the intrigue on second viewing, you won't find this boring at all.
AC
P.S. If you rent the dvd, watch the deleted scenes, epecially the sub-plot of his brother-in-law's return from Russia (in the theater version, he is assumed dead). The dvd version gives you more background in Damon's subtle plan to bring down those who set him up for the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
The Good Shepherd - Kenji - 10-24-2007
Well, one of the reasons I couldn't enjoy this movie is a running time. 167 min was a little bit long as for this movie to me. It need edits.
And....I wanted to feel high tension.
That's my opinion.