The Good Shepherd [DVD] [2006]

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• This item: The Good Shepherd [DVD] [2006] DVD ~ Matt Damon

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• Babel [DVD] [2006] DVD ~ Brad Pitt

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• Notes On A Scandal [DVD] [2007] DVD ~ Cate Blanchett

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Amazon.co.uk Review
A complicated movie about the Central Intelligence Agency and its agents, The Good Shepherd isn't your typical spy movie. Though it stars Matt Damon (The Bourne Identity films) and Angelina Jolie (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Lara Croft franchise)--actors with considerable experience in the action-espionage genre--The Good Shepherd requires that they play more subdued and (much less interesting) characters here. The movie focuses on the career or Edward Wilson (Damon), a privileged Yale graduate who goes on to help found the CIA. He is a quiet, serious, and guarded man, even in the most intimate moments with his civilian wife (Jolie, in a role that wastes her talent). Set against a backdrop of real-life events such as the Bay of Pigs, The Good Shepherd is meticulous in creating a realistic timeframe. The film gets a jolt of excitement when Robert DeNiro (in his first directing role since 1993's A Bronx Tale) peppers the screen with appearances by Joe Pesci, Alec Baldwin, and William Hurt. But those moments are too infrequent. At 157 minutes long, the film is crammed with many factual details, but the characters are shortchanged when it comes to development. Viewers have to wonder why anyone, much less someone like Wilson who has everything going for him, would devote his life to a thankless job that brings so little happiness to himself and his family. The Good Shepherd is an ambitious but flawed film. The actors do a formidable job with a well-intentioned but meandering script. However, we meet so many characters and learn so little about each that it's difficult to drum up much empathy for any of them. --Jae-Ha Kim

Synopsis
With The Good Shepherd, Robert De Niro (A Bronx Tale) makes an ambitious return to the director’s chair. A labour of love for Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (Forrest Gump), the film tells an epic, fictionalised account of how the Central Intelligence Agency was born. Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, a reserved young man who graduated from Yale in the late 1930s. His membership in the exclusive Skull and Bones society led him away from poetry and into a relationship with the federal government, who recruited him to help them on several covert operations. Roth’s script alternates between Wilson’s gradual emergence as a genuine government operative in the early 1940s and the infamous Bay of Pigs conflict in the early 1960s. Along the way, he has a sweet romance with a pretty deaf girl (a sparkling Tammy Blanchard) and ends up marrying the woman he makes pregnant (Angelina Jolie) out of a strong sense of duty. Throughout the film, the emergence of a mysterious tape haunts Wilson, who is determined to uncover the truth behind a leak in his secret organisation. Production designer Jeannine Claudia Oppewall (L.A. Confidential, Catch Me if You Can) and costume designer Ann Roth (The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley) faithfully recreate these earlier periods in American history, while the imagery of Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson (J.F.K., The Aviator) casts a warm, stately glow upon De Niro’s assembled cast of luminaries (including Alec Baldwin, Michael Gambon, William Hurt, Billy Crudup, and Joe Pesci). The result is a production that recalls Francis Ford Coppola’'s The Conversation and Steven Spielberg'’s Munich.

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43 Reviews 5 star:  (11) 4 star:  (10) 3 star:  (5) 2 star:  (11) 1 star:  (6)           Average Customer Review 3.2 out of 5 stars (43 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   31 of 33 people found the following review helpful: 4.0 out of 5 stars The Spy Who Didn't Love Anyone, 9 May 2007 By  Ichabod J (Farleigh Wallop, Hampshire) - See all my reviews    This is a long, sombre film that charts the origins of the CIA from its WWII OSS roots. It follows the career of Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), a privileged Yale graduate, up to 1961 and the Bay of Pigs invasion into Cuba. Along the way, we are shown that the early CIA was a bastion of the Ivy League Establishment. We are also given a hard look at the types of people with a flair for Intelligence work - there are no James Bonds here. Damon does well with a character it's hard to empathise with, who always puts his work first and lets his family life suffer. (The casting of Angelina Jolie as Damon's put-upon wife seemed to be stretching a point though!) This film is an antidote to the usual, glamorous depictions of espionage that cinema gives us. The Agency operatives here, and their Russian counterparts, seem like staid civil servants most of the time, which makes the occasional scenes of violence all the more chilling, especially as there is nothing stylised about them. The cast here is first rate (Joe Pesci has an especially entertaining cameo as a Meyer Lansky Mob figure, whose help the CIA attempt to enlist prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion - though it is not explained that Castro had confiscated the Mob's Cuban casinos upon coming to power). De Niro has given us a film that soberly examines the world of spies and starkly shows us the human cost of the games they play. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   18 of 20 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Long, complex and compelling. Rewards careful watching, 17 Oct 2007 By  Hooligween "Rowena the Red" (Kernow, Great Britain) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    If you ever wondered how the CIA came to be, and who formed the fledgling organisation, then this is a fascinating movie. Like the novels of Robert Littell, it goes into the hidden depths of the intelligence network and examines how it formed in the aftermath of WW2, who started to work for it, and how the Company took over their lives. Yet although The Good Shepherd is about what became a massive organisation, it's told as a very personal story. We follow Matt Damon's novice agent as he becomes an influential character, hovering on the edges of historical disasters and triumphs. We see how his life is dominated by the CIA and its secrets; how the war separated him from his wife and how his paranoia pushes them further apart. Angelina Jolie is excellent as his wife, by the way. (If you doubt her acting ability then check out Girl Interrupted). She even ages through the decades of the story with some credibility. Robert De Niro is the director of the film and he appears in it briefly (with a scary example of what diabetes can do to you!). There's a great supporting cast overall, but Damon takes the real credit. His character couldn't be further away from the action man Jason Bourne, and is entirely believable. In the end, the ultimate CIA man has to make the ultimate decision. Does he betray his country or his grown up son? It's a painful and shocking ending to a long but well measured film. Don't watch this if you're looking for James Bond thrills, but give it a go if you enjoy Le Carre-style spying. At the very least it sheds light on how good people end up doing bad things to protect the country they love. At best, it's an entralling evening's entertainment. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   25 of 29 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars The Good Shepherd, 25 Jun 2007 By  papaya bueno "Frank Chambers" (Obispo) - See all my reviews Some reviewers have complained of lack of action and a dull main character; of a man with no obvious feelings, dedicated only to secrecy in the service of `The Company'. If you want gung-ho, bullet dodging heroes, then Tom Clancy and Harrison Ford are the guys for you. If you want to know where the men who are now running the USA (and hence the world) originated, and how they took a stranglehold on power, then watch this film. It is an intelligent account of the early days of the CIA: an extension of a rich old boy's network that may have begun with honourable intentions, but soon became a cabal, protecting vested interests, and now views its purpose solely to nurture the interests of one percent of one country's citizens, at the expense of just about everyone else on the planet. If that takes grey, violent men, obsessively secretive to the point of destroying their own families, then that's a price they willingly pay. The film succeeds admirably. De Niro maintains intelligence (pun intended) throughout, without pandering to target audiences or oversimplifying in case `they' won't understand it. Two or three viewings may be necessary to absorb everything here. Like Emilio Estevez's 'Bobby', I think this is a `where it all started to go wrong' film, inviting comparisons with today. As a Russian defector, at the end of his tether under torture says: `Soviet power is a myth. A great show. But there are no spare parts. Nothing is working. It's nothing but painted rust. But you. You need to keep the Russian myth alive to maintain your military-industrial complex. Your system depends on Russia being perceived as a threat. It is not a threat. It was never a threat. It never will be a threat. It is a rotten, bloated cow.' Even at two hours and forty minutes, I didn't want the film to end. The action, or conflict is unrelenting. Thought provoking, clever, entertaining, well-acted and genuine. An oddity, in other words. Comment Comments (2) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this) Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review › See all 43 customer reviews...		Most Recent Customer Reviews 1.0 out of 5 stars One large illogical heap of nonsense So, all the other reviews focus on the bad acting, the hilarious miscasting, the boring pace and the interminable length. All fair, the movie suffers all of that in spades. Read more Published 4 months ago by Tripe Agent 2.0 out of 5 stars As a director, De Niro proves he's still a pretty good actor Robert DeNiro and Matt Damon were responsible for possibly my biggest disappointment of 2007, The Good Shepherd, which has to be one of the five or six most boring films I have... Read more Published 10 months ago by Matthew Mercy 3.0 out of 5 stars Above Average Spy Film; Let Down By Fictionalised History The CIA's primary role at the time, covert operations in Guatemala, Iran and Cuba are barely explored. Read more Published 10 months ago by Mr. R. P. J. Martin 3.0 out of 5 stars The Good Shepherd 'The Good Shepherd' is one of those films that could have offered so much more, and sadly didn't. The cast was good, the direction was good, the story was good and yet nothing... Read more Published 10 months ago by Spider Monkey 2.0 out of 5 stars I spy with my little eye - something beginning with `d' - for dull. De Niro makes a surprising move here into spy territory - not modern Bourne type stuff (despite the presence of Matt Damon) but more like an American John Le Carre type story, in... Read more Published 13 months ago by Mr. Stephen Kennedy 2.0 out of 5 stars Boring, rambling and miscast This film sets itself some ambitious targets and misses just about all of them. It's at least 30 minutes too long; it jumps about confusingly in time and, as others have... Read more Published 13 months ago by will_de_beest 1.0 out of 5 stars Loss of interest We settled down for an evening of entertainment - what a disappointment! The film failed to "hook" us and so after 45 minutes gave up and went to bed. Published 14 months ago by Mrs. Elaine Marriott 1.0 out of 5 stars The Good Shepherd Boring, boring, boring ! I have a lot of patience, but this film really tested it. It went on for ever, and I kept hoping that something would happen and... Read more Published 15 months ago by L. Rodwell 5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful, complex drama. It is banal to say that 'the characters do not develop' Anyone who can say something like this about this thoughtful, intelligent film has clearly failed to grasp its essence. Read more Published 15 months ago by CallyK 2.0 out of 5 stars The Dull Shepherd Wow. This was dull. Now don't get me wrong I was not expecting some James Bond all guns blazing action, I don't especially like those films but this was dull with a capital D... Read more Published 16 months ago by Eve Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews › See all 43 customer reviews...

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