"The Good Shepherd" (2006) - Movie Review

“The Good Shepherd” is a victim and at the same time artistic saviour of its style. To tell a real story about a man whose life is nothing but secret is an irony. You need to portray it to factual detail of the emotional stabilization and unmoving soul of Edward Wilson and at the same time try to explain the genesis of CIA. Adding to that to bring out the difficulties, confusion and the regret of the character of his actions makes it a dead lock situations. Hence at the end of the film, we believe to have witnessed everything but so shallow and an in depth investigation on the surface to call it the origin, development and an untold story about the birth of CIA seems far fetched.

The movie moves back and forth in the 1961 after the Bay of Pigs invasion was lost in one of the US funded inside attack to overthrow Castro from Cuba and the flash back. It looks through following Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), a CIA officer. Then Edward is taken back when he is right out of Yale University which essentially starts the journey from 1939. He is getting recruited by a secret society called Skull and Bones which is a buffer tunnel to secretive operation of the country.

The tint of the film for most part in both the flash back and the current sequence has darkish layer. Shadows are used over the face of Edward to represent his half exposed and half hidden agendas. Then it shifts to confuse that nothing is as it looks. Everybody talks in cryptic language and deciphering it is waste of time for audience. I can see what director Robert De Niro is trying to do. He wants us to experience, I mean the true experience of following a spy who cannot even with himself be open and honest which would compromise sensitive information. Now this brings us to the term of information. The myth which as one of the character later tells being created to actually provide job security for the CIA. Comical but pragmatically makes a lot of sense.

The film is a patient process in building up the bricks one by one in a neat and clean manner. But this is the funny part, we see lot of images and left with nothing explanatory. The film laboriously takes 167 minutes to rest its case and we feel exhausted but an empty floor at the top. De Niro in the process of giving a character who spent all his life guarding the truth, lies and deception fails in the screen to bring it forward. Artistically it can be nothing more than spectacular to be brave enough to audaciously display this man full of hidden information. But the goal out here in this movie is to address the historic and biographic nature of an organization. Hence it needs to be laid out in detail on what exactly is happening out here. This conflict of interest ends the film with the same on what to conclude.

It is a well crafted professional movie. Matt Damon on an honest note needs to keep a straight face almost the entire time of the movie. He is in every frame and that makes him important. May be we get used, bored and unnoticed by seeing him emotionless for such a long time that he disappears as a character. He does not love his wife, Margaret Clover (Angleina Jolie) but loves his son, Edward Jr. (Eddie Redmayne) due to which he married Clover. His real love got lost with Laura (Tammy Blanchard) but he never gets time or his nature of job does not allow him to get closer to his son. While it is acceptable to have an older son when Edward is not much of an old age, Matt Damon does not look mature enough to make us believe to be the father. And being Angelina Jolie just made him even younger. Nothing wrong with acting but looks like Damon is not the right cast for the role. But he suits perfectly for initial upbringings. When he looks inexperienced yet has a professional outlook is remarkable. Particularly circled by experienced actors like John Turturo (Watch out for the scene when he joins duty under Matt Damon, spectacular!), William Hurt and Robert De Niro, the Matt Damon character from real life as such suited the young Edward Wilson. The cast is out of norm when the scenes of him being around the age of forty pops up.

Overall I liked the movie. The thing is the confused identity of being in a specific list it tries to be. The battle becomes the perplexing content and hence loses itself. It is dangerous to think about the cold war game of two individuals eventually affecting two nation’s fate. Even when the leaders of the two countries discuss their relationship either in amicable nature or animosity, the ground level players are the coin movers. There are four characters to be compared and analyzed for this spy game. We meet Dr. Fredericks (Michael Gambon), a man without any emotional ties, who has seen all and being a mentor tries to warn Edward before his demise of a sweet exit right away. Edward in a state of effacing his father’s disgrace and approval drives him beyond the warning of Dr. Fredericks. The other is the British Intelligence official, Arch Cummings (Bill Crudup) who we get to know a little is aware of his actions but he too appear to be without family. Ulysses the adversary of Edward in the Soviet front knows more about everything and estimates Edward better than Edward does on Ulysses. This does not mean Edward is not a good player; it is just that the weakness for Edward is more than the Ulysses’ weakness of not like being in a cold weather. Edward who seems devoid of emotion and attachment indeed has the weakness and also his strength which is his last touch to reality, his son.