THE GOOD SHEPHERD

Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd is a cross between a bloated failure and a fascinating masterpiece. I'm not sure what went wrong when it was released (it could be that it came out with the similarly titled The Good German, which was a much lesser movie), but I can imagine the studio struggled to advertise an almost three-hour movie where the hero has no personality and is frankly more than a little unlikable. It bombed at the box office, and came up basically empty-handed at the end of awards season... but there is something about this odd epic that is worth a look on DVD.

The Good Shepherd traces the beginning of the U.S.'s Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) through the eyes of a stolid and patriotic young man named Edward Wilson (Matt Damon). In the late 1930s, he is hamming it up as a student at Yale, being taken under the wing of a poetry teacher (Michael Gambon), and dating a sweet deaf co-ed named Laura (the exceptional Tammy Blanchard). Two things change his life: his acceptance to the secret Skull and Bones society, whose contacts will shape his professional life; and a one-night stand with a hottie named Clover (Angelina Jolie), the sister of one of his friends. Next thing you know, Clover is pregnant, Edward is rushed to abruptly dump Laura to marry Clover, and he is called off to serve his country in the European war. He is one of the young men that has been plucked from the respected high-ranks of prestigious schools to serve as a foreign intelligence agent during World War II. It is these same young men whom, after the war, are formed into the group that would become the C.I.A.

Damon plays Edward as a stick-in-the-mud man with no sense of humor. It is startling in the flashbacks to see the passion and openness he had as a young man, considering who (or what) he turns into. He is the man from black-and-white films, with fedora and trenchcoat, lurking in the shadows watching. It is not surprising that after returning from five years in Europe to a wife he barely knows that she finds she has nothing in common with him other than their child.

But despite such a controlled performance by Damon, where Edward almost appears to be a man without emotion, his character is compelling through the whole film. As his morals seem to slip away, you wonder if a crack in his veneer will ever appear. "Trust no one" is the recurring theme, but you still end up crossing your fingers that there will be one redeeming character that will throw the character of Edward into a tailspin.

At almost three hours long, the film at times certainly feels bloated. My friend was dissatisfied that a relatively flimsy mystery was meant to hold the whole structure of the film together, one which felt tacked-on to the main character's path. Also, there are many Russian agent names thrown around, which I had trouble keeping track of, despite some filmmaking tricks (like showing a printed name or constant name-dropping) to help the audience along. And a revelation about Edward's father comes too little, too late, minimizing the impact of a moment that is supposed to tie it all together.

The Good Shepherd spans over 20 years of Wilson's life, from 1939 to the early 1960s during the Bay of Pigs Cuban crisis. According to murmuring on the IMDb, apparently Robert DeNiro has threatened that he might not yet be done with the character of Edward Wilson. Will there be a sequel? Perhaps. Would I watch it? Heck, yes, I would. If post-World War II isn't juicy enough for a spy drama, imagine how the Cold War in its full glory would be!