The Good Shepherd (Widescreen Edition)

I gave this film 5 stars for its courage and willingness to trust the intelligence of the audience to unravel a complex plot and complicated relationships. This is not an easy film for those who don't wish to solve the multiple puzzles we are presented. The film reflects a philosophy that both character analysis and espionage are complex, multi-layered, and often are not what they seem on the surface.The film uses a crisis situation at the CIA to unfold the history of the CIA as well as the history of the agency's top administrators that parallels the development of the agency and its mission. The Bay of Pigs invasion is a failure and it appears that Fidel Castro and his Soviet handlers were well aware of where the invading force would land on the coast of Cuba. This crisis is revisited repeatedly as we see the development of the CIA and the development of Edmund Wilson, an OSS Officer who becomes a CIA founder.Matt Damon plays a resolved, cold character, Edmund Wilson, who is dedicated to the protection of his country even though there are multiple consequences for him, his wife, and his son. He receives two odd, manipulated video and audio tapes that begin to reveal who might have tipped off the soviets and Fidel that the Americans were coming. These tapes are all part of a complex effort to neutralize Wilson by the KGB.The film traces the development of the agency from its OSS roots in World War II. Wilson becomes a spy and is located in London during the war where he is involved with some of the spy and counter-spy activities with the Nazis. His old English Professor at Yale turns out to be a spy who mentors him during the war on intelligence gathering and analysis. However after the war in post-war Berlin he gets to fully experience and develop his craft in a cat and mouse game with the Soviets as they try to find Nazi scientists that both wish to capture and recruit for the emerging cold war.Yet all these espionage experiences also teach him that he can not trust anyone as he experiences duplicity from trusted friends and associates. Gradually Wilson becomes more aware of his KGB rival and they play a deadly and complex game to undermine each other's attempts at intelligence gathering. For example, Wilson attempts to get Nazi scientists out of Germany before the Soviets can obtain them. His translator is eventually revealed to be a spy who is helping the Soviets obtain the scientists or at least trade Jewish scientists for Nazi scientists.The Soviet spy known as Ulysses sends decoy officials to give disinformation to the CIA, he follows Wilson and tries to disrupt his marriage when Wilson has a one-night-stand with an old girlfriend. Eventually the pain and intrigue gets closer and closer to Wilson, trying to find a way to compromise his integrity and put him in a position to give information to the Soviets.I found the film very interesting and complex, requiring me to pay attention to subtle relationships, images, lines of dialogue, and understated movements. This gives the film a feeling of authenticity. In addition, the KGB and the CIA both played very dirty and this seems very realistic. We see spies killed once they are no longer needed and have too much information to allow to live.The cast was superb with Matt Damon playing a cool, hardened man who has sacrificed much for his country yet his sacrifice is silent and only he really knows the extent of what he has lost and how little he has personally gained. In fact, the man had not really gained personally at all except that he has been given intellectually devious competition against which he feels he must prevail. He sacrificed his first love to marry the pregnant sister of his Yale friend and co-member of the Skull and Bones club.Angelina Jolie plays the flirty passionate Senator's daughter who becomes married to a cold man possessed with a mission to protect the USA. She is neglected and resentful. Years of absence from the home distances husband and wife until Edmund can only feel compassion for his wife for all she has endured to support his career and dedication.William Hurt plays the handsome, smart, first director of the CIA who overplays his hand by becoming a board member of a coffee company that benefits from the CIA assassinating the President of a Latin American nation that was nationalizing the businesses within their borders on a path toward Communism. Edmund Wilson gentle lets him know that the game is up and thus allows him to resign and move on without scandal.Robert De Nero plays the role of a General who heads OSS and then lays the groundwork for the CIA at the end of WWII. Alec Balwin plays a cool detached FBI agent who is an ally for Wilson and allows him to identify problem personnel within the CIA. Billy Crudup plays his British counterpart and mentor who eventually is revealed to be something other than what he presents. Joe Pesci plays a Mafia don who assists in the Bay of Pigs invasion when Castro takes over 4 of his casinos in Havana.Eventually the Bay of Pigs crisis is resolved from the intelligence aspect and the culprit who has said too much is revealed. Heavy prices are paid.Those that serve their country with their minds are often overlooked and under appreciated since they make personal sacrifice that only they know have been made. The sacrifices are not made just by the individual who is in government service, but also by those that love him/her and those that he/she loves. This intelligent film honors all those individuals. It is brave motion picture making.

The Good Shepherd plays out like a John Le Carre spy thriller. That means the story is very nuanced and the plot is very slow moving. It features Matt Damon in two story lines. The first, how he became a spy on the eve of World War II and then when he was a CIA officer and had to investigate the failure of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Included in that is a human side as Damon’s job takes a toll on his wife Angelina Jolie and their son. That points to the transformation his character went through which is shown in the two plot lines. It also highlights the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) establishment from Yale to the Skull and Cross Bones that dominated American society and politics at the time. For instance, when Damon is recruited into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) which would become the CIA by Robert De Niro he says that the government is looking for “the right people meaning no Jews, no Negros and very few Catholics.”Michael Gambon really stands out as a man who stuck by his convictions and knew what a dirty game espionage was.The Le Carre feel is shown in reoccurring scenes like Damon and analysts going over the minute details of a picture and recording they received. It shows spy tradecraft but it is extremely slow going. Damon also has his KGB rival just like in a Le Carre novel such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.The movie takes patience but it’s worthwhile.

The actors were all great…intrigue & suspense…all around good film…you need to pay attention or you’ll have to watch a few times!!…

The CIA had planned an invasion of Cuba using exile forces (housed in Florida) during the Eisenhower Administration. Then Kennedy became president and he believed if the dictator Castro remained in power, communism would spread to other Western Hemisphere nations. From erroneous intelligence, it was thought the invasion would spark a wider uprising or revolt to overthrow the communist regime. So on April 16, 1961, arriving in seven ships, the small exile army of nearly 16 hundred landed on the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Castro was ready. It was as if he had prior knowledge of the attack. Castro's vastly superior forces killed 114 rebels and quickly captured 12 hundred. Kennedy prohibited American involvement, restricted bombing operations, and refused to authorize air cover for the invasion, because he feared Soviet Premier Khrushchev would retaliate with a counter move against West Berlin. Upon hearing the news of the disastrous failure, Kennedy was furious and fulminated that he would, "... shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter [them] to the winds." He fired Allen Dulles and two other top officials (Richard Bissell and Charles Cabell) and all CIA overseas personnel was put under State Department control. Kennedy was outraged, understandably, because it made his new administration and the U.S. look inept and imperialistic. The story begins in 1939 when Edward (Matt Damon) was attending Yale University. He met Laura, also a student, whom he would have married if Clover Russell (Angelina Jolie) hadn't interjected herself into his life by seducing him and becoming pregnant. How could he refuse her? She was much more attractive, but you have to feel for Laura, and sadly Edward would have been far happier with Laura (as we see later in the movie). Clover manipulated Edward to please her brother, John Russell Jr., and father, John Russell Sr., a powerful, influential senator. The Russell family had close ties with the establishment (Skull and Bones fraternal organization). The concept of a CIA was in a nascent stage, and someone was needed, with no better credentials than Edward's, to lead the organization. Their plans for Edward came to fruition. In other words, and most irksome, he was railroaded. For the CIA, Edward's role became tantamount to that of J. Edgar Hoover with the FBI. A central focus of the film is on a tape recorded exchange of information about the planned Cuban invasion before it happened between a white man and a black woman. Information was provided that only a CIA operative could have known. Edward, third in the chain of command with the CIA, was connecting the dots and conducting the investigation of this tape recording. A plethora of clues had been gathered from this recording and also from a surveillance video. Forensic evidence had narrowed the search to a specific location and possible identity of the spy who committed this treasonous act. At the beginning of the movie, all CIA agents were suspect, even Edward. The tension and paranoia and the ponderous toll it was taking on the intelligence officers was vividly portrayed. You get a clear sense of the methodical and meticulous planning involved and the interwoven connectedness of the CIA and KGB. This becomes apparent when Edward's son, also a CIA agent, was entrapped in a relationship with a female KGB spymaster for the purpose of blackmailing Edward. A cunning, Angelina, dazzled with a performance that made this very remarkable film that much better. It's a masterpiece and top ten favorite!

This is a review of the 2015 All Region Blu-ray from Universal Studios Home Entertainment. Technically, the sound and picture quality are both very good. There is little bonus content.On paper, this is a high octane offering. The screenplay is by Eric Roth, OSCAR-nominated for ‘Forest Gump’(1994), the 2018 version of ‘A Star is Born’ and ‘Dune’(2021), amongst other films. He won for ‘Gump’. The director is the multi-OSCAR-winning actor Robert De Niro, whose first directorial effort was the outstanding 6 Star Gangster film ‘A Bronx Tale’(1993). The stellar cast includes Matt Damon in the lead role; Eddie Redmayne in one of his first film roles; Angelina Jolie as the romantic lead; Alec Baldwin, William Hurt, John Turturro and Joe Pesci in supporting character roles; Michael Gambon outacting everyone with ease as one of the few really interesting characters.However, paper exercises are notorious for not predicting the real outcome, and that is certainly true here. A film that promises so much is frankly, sadly, a big disappointment.The film sets out to provide us with a sort of history of the birth of the CIA. Names are different, but characters are loosely based on real people. Thus, Damon plays Edward Wilson, partly based on James Jesus Angleton, the highly regarded CIA Chief of Counterintelligence. This is a tasty if ambitious premise, and the 167 minute running time provides scope. The feel and look of the film is authentic, especially in the US, and in the later scenes set in the 1950s and 1960s. The entitled ‘Skull & Bones’ aspects are particularly and deliciously unsavoury.However, the British content suggests little real knowledge. New Yorker Billy Crudup as the Kim Philbyesque Cummings has an iffy accent. The streets of wartime London are brilliantly lit. Britain’s exceptionally successful SOE is portrayed as elite, unutterably snobbish, homophobic and murderous towards it’s own. Sorry, I don’t buy any of it.Damon is ideal as the young Wilson, but is far less persuasive as the older man: ruthless, emotionless and the father of Eddie Redmayne! They are actually only 12 years different in age! Redmayne, Pesci and Tammy Blanchard as another love interest, are good, but most of the other characters are not especially well explained or defined. De Niro himself, as General Bill Sullivan, based on William J. Donovan, the head of the US OSS in WW2 and the ‘founding father’ of the CIA, is good. He gives an excellent and relevant summary of his concerns about possible overreach. But he then seemingly goes along with just that. There is little explanation or real clarity through much of the plot. We just trip over world events, incoherently jumbled together, then skip chunks of time with just a few words of semi-explanation.This is a subject that could have been really gripping and revealing. Instead, De Niro delivers a bit of a disjointed turkey, a glaring missed opportunity that only justifies 3 seriously frustrated Stars.

Slow burner with great cast, Matt Damon having to hold his own with heavy weights which he does. Long but well constructed with a nice twisting plotline that keeps you hooked. Love the look and feel of the periods portrayed, not sure why it has not had more acclaim but it's on my Blu-ray shelve for repeated watching.

Good movie but very slow moving hence rating,well directed by De Niro,movie covers the birth of the CIA.

Man nehme : einen wesentlich zu langen Film, kürze ihn per Zufallszahl um 1/3 der Sequenzen, setze die restlichen Sequenzen per Zufallsgenerator (die Sequenzen haben kurz bis sehr kurz zu sein) zusammen, versehe manchmal eine Sequenz mit einer Zeitangabe in der sie spielt als Untertitel und habe nun einen Film.Ferner achte man bei der Regie streng darauf die Modulation der gesprochenen Texte zu minimieren, ebenso die Mimik der Protagonisten auf das absolute MINIMUM zu beschränken...Und schwups hat man diesen Film...P.S. NULL-Sterne konnte man leider nicht vergeben...

Molto bello! Regia di Robert De Niro (il che già incuriosisce), ha una storia importante e impegnativa, ma non risulta mai pesante. É un film privo di azione, suspense o colpi di scena, ma tiene viva l'attenzione per la sua intera durata (parliamo di 2h e mezza!). Ben costruito, ben realizzato, si concentra principalmente sul personaggio di Matt Damon, che ha saputo tenere da solo un'intera pellicola di questo genere e mole in modo esemplare. Bravi anche altri attori del cast (John Torturro, Michael Gambon, io direi anche Lee Pace). Non è propriamente mainstream, forse qualcuno potrebbe aspettarsi qualcosa di diverso, magari trovarlo un po' lento: io personalmente sono rimasta piacevolmente sorpresa. Consigliato!