Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Moody and Suspenseful!, 24 April 2007
I found this film to be totally absorbing, and yet, I can see how it would not appeal to those who are looking for fast-paced adventure. The tone of the film is intense, moody, and thought-provoking. The main character, played convincingly by an understated Matt Damon, is very loosely based upon James Jesus Angleton, a Yale poet, who studied counter-espionage with Kim Philby in London during World War II, and who presided over counter-espionage in the CIA during its infancy. One of the themes that the film explores is the toll taken by espionage on the life of the effective agent who must compartmentalize himself in respect to the conflicting and incompatible demands made by his secret work and his family. Utter detachment is the key to survival, and Matt Damon plays the spy's abdication from all emotion to perfection.
The cinematography is stunning, the music is riveting, and the actors are excellent. It is not always easy, however, to follow the story, and it took several viewings for me to piece the complex events together. In fact, the half-dozen deleted scenes, provided on the DVD, help immensely. In my opinion, the sequences with Damon's brother-in-law, who has spent time in a Soviet labor camp and may or may not be a brain-washed penetration agent, should never have been cut, since they explain a lot about the main character's family dynamic. Even though the film is long and complex, however, my interest never flagged.
Since the scenes shift back and forth (the subtitles, however, explain the location and time-frame adequately), some important plot points have been lost. For instance, we see the son asking his father to be taken into the CIA, but we are not told whether he has actually joined. Was it after his initiation into the Agency that he fell into the Soviet honey-trap? How did he get to the Congo in the first place? Did Damon's character actually suspect or recognize the true identity of the victim in the blackmail film? And is it he or his Soviet counterpart who is responsible for the outcome? These questions are never adequately addressed.
Since the story is highly fictionalized, I am not certain why the directors introduced the young Cambridge SIS liason officer, who articulates clearly in London of the Blitz, but who develops a pronounced stammer in 1950-something Washington shortly before he defects to Moscow. Is he supposed to be a composite of Burgess, Maclean, and Philby (who stammered but did not defect until 1963)? That sub-plot is never developed. And why give the Soviet defector-mole in Washington the name of an historical KGB officer, Yuri Modin (who who was neither in Washington nor ever defected). Even though the real Modin was posing as a Soviet cypher clerk in the London Soviet Embassy and was actually running Burgess and Blunt, he never pretended to be anyone other than Yuri Modin. I found this detail to be jarring, since all the other characters have been given fictional names. Why not merely call the character Ivan Ivanovich? Seems a bit rough on Modin!
These are mere quibbles, though, in a story that I found, on the whole, fascinating.
P.S. After watching this film for a fourth time and paying close attention to the chronology, I was able to discover the answers to at least some the questions that I posed above. I also believe that I have figured out the relationship of the title, "The Good Shepherd," to the Yale "Whiffenpoof Song" that the Bonesmen sing several times in the film: 'We're poor little lambs who have lost our way . . .; We're little black sheep who have gone astray. . ." The lyrics to this song also give us another clue to a theme of the movie (as well as an allusion to another famous film): ". . .doomed from here to Eternity. Lord, have mercy on such as we. . ."
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Spy Who Didn't Love Anyone, 14 Mar 2007
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.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Moody and Suspenseful, 5 April 2007
I found this film to be totally absorbing, and yet, I can see how it would not appeal to those who are looking for fast-paced adventure. The tone of the film is intense, moody, and thought-provoking. The main character, played convincingly by an understated Matt Damon, is very loosely based upon James Jesus Angleton, a Yale poet, who studied counter-espionage with Kim Philby in London during World War II, and who presided over counter-espionage in the CIA during its infancy. One of the themes that the film explores is the toll taken by espionage on the life of the effective agent who must compartmentalize himself in respect to the conflicting and incompatible demands made by his secret work and his family. Utter detachment is the key to survival, and Matt Damon plays the spy's abdication from all emotion to perfection.
The cinematography is stunning, the music is riveting, and the actors are excellent. It is not always easy, however, to follow the story, and it took several viewings for me to piece the complex events together. In fact, the half-dozen deleted scenes, provided on the DVD, help immensely. In my opinion, the sequences with Damon's brother-in-law, who has spent time in a Soviet labor camp and may or may not be a brain-washed penetration agent, should never have been cut, since they explain a lot about the main character's family dynamic. Even though the film is long and complex, however, my interest never flagged.
Since the scenes shift back and forth (the subtitles, however, explain the location and time-frame adequately), some important plot points have been lost. For instance, we see the son asking his father to be taken into the CIA, but we are not told whether he has actually joined. Was it after his initiation into the Agency that he fell into the Soviet honey-trap? How did he get to the Congo in the first place? Did Damon's character actually suspect or recognize the true identity of the victim in the blackmail film? And is it he or his Soviet counterpart who is responsible for the outcome? These questions are never adequately addressed.
Since the story is highly fictionalized, I am not certain why the directors introduced the young Cambridge SIS liason officer, who articulates clearly in London of the Blitz, but who develops a pronounced stammer in 1950-something Washington shortly before he defects to Moscow. Is he supposed to be a composite of Burgess, Maclean, and Philby (who stammered but did not defect until 1963)? That sub-plot is never developed. And why give the Soviet defector-mole in Washington the name of an historical KGB officer, Yuri Modin (who who was neither in Washington nor ever defected). Even though the real Modin was posing as a Soviet cypher clerk in the London Soviet Embassy and was actually running Burgess and Blunt, he never pretended to be anyone other than Yuri Modin. I found this detail to be jarring, since all the other characters have been given fictional names. Why not merely call the character Ivan Ivanovich? Seems a bit rough on Modin!
These are mere quibbles, though, in a story that I found, on the whole, fascinating.
P.S. After watching this film for a fourth time and paying close attention to the chronology, I was able to discover the answers to at least some the questions that I posed above. I also believe that I have figured out the relationship of the title, "The Good Shepherd," to the Yale "Whiffenpoof Song" that the Bonesmen sing several times in the film: 'We're poor little lambs who have lost our way . . .; We're little black sheep who have gone astray. . ." The lyrics to this song also give us another clue to a theme of the movie (as well as an allusion to another famous film): ". . .doomed from here to Eternity. Lord, have mercy on such as we. . ."
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