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Title: The Good Shepherd (2006)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Matt Damon | ... | Edward Wilson | |
| Angelina Jolie | ... | Margaret 'Clover' Russell | |
| Alec Baldwin | ... | Sam Murach | |
| Tammy Blanchard | ... | Laura | |
| Billy Crudup | ... | Arch Cummings | |
| Robert De Niro | ... | Bill Sullivan | |
| Keir Dullea | ... | Senator John Russell, Sr. | |
| Michael Gambon | ... | Dr. Fredericks | |
| Martina Gedeck | ... | Hanna Schiller | |
| William Hurt | ... | Philip Allen | |
| Timothy Hutton | ... | Thomas Wilson | |
| Mark Ivanir | ... | Valentin Mironov #2 | |
| Gabriel Macht | ... | John Russell, Jr. | |
| Lee Pace | ... | Richard Hayes | |
| Joe Pesci | ... | Joseph Palmi | |
Laconic and self-contained, Edward Wilson heads CIA covert operations during the Bay of Pigs. The agency suspects that Castro was tipped, so Wilson looks for the leak. As he investigates, he recalls, in a series of flashbacks, his father's death, student days at Yale (poetry; Skull and Bones), recruitment into the fledgling OSS, truncated affairs, a shotgun marriage, cutting his teeth on spy craft in London, distance from his son, the emergence of the Cold War, and relationships with agency, British, and Soviet counterparts. We watch his idealism give way to something else: disclosing the nature of that something else is at the heart of the film's narration as he closes in on the leak. Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
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After enduring trailer after trailer with endless stings of explosions, ridiculous CG-assisted stunts and mindless action, I felt very rewarded with an intelligent and intriguing film that defies the status quo of bigger and louder is better.
The Good Sheperd doesn't insult your intelligence, it stimulates it, sometimes confuses it, and forces you to look several layers beneath the surface. It feels like a throwback to another era of films when the complexity of a character was of greater importance than spectacle.
De Niro took a page from his producer's best work, Francis Ford Coppola, emulating films like The Godfather, The Conversation and Apacalypse Now. The drama rises not from the usual blatant conventional devices but rather by raising questions because of what we're not told and not shown. It requires a great deal of courage to use this style as films have gravitated more and more toward assuming the average moviegoer is of substandard intelligence. The scope of the film is enormous, yet the point of view is narrowly focused to be seen through the eyes of one man. There are a dozen of subplots, but all are carefully tied into the through-line of the story to match the main character's progression.
The film may require some understanding of American history from WWII through the Kennedy administration. It starts with the later years of the story, The Bay of Pigs debacle, and traces the steps that lead to it, one of the more embarrassing moments in the history of U.S. foreign policy. I found it a bit annoying that Matt Damon's character, Edward Wilson, barely seemed to age in the film while others around him did (the best way to determine his age is whether he's wearing wire-rimmed or horn-rimmed glasses), but it didn't ruin the film for me.
Overall though, definitely one of the best films of 2006. A rare film that makes you want to think and understand, rather than forget.