The Good Shepherd (2006)

Truly the worst movie I've ever seen in a theater

Absolutely amazing

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The tumultuous early history of the Central Intelligence Agency is viewed through the prism of one man's life. My biggest problem with The Good Shepherd is definitely the outrageous 167 minutes and the pacing was so slow and boring plus seeing Matt Damon dressed as a woman and singing gave me nightmares and even tho the cast is fantastic and talented such as Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, Billy Crudup, Robert De Niro and William Hurt are all of them fantastic actors but their characters were just very one note and pretty lame and it's a real shame and De Niro himself should probably start making great movies again instead of things like this. (5/10)

'The Good Shepherd' is at its best when it sticks to nuts-and-bolts cinematic fundamentals: good acting, good shots, engrossing characters, engaging story lines. It is at its worst when it descends into "evolutive" political moralizing: the Cold War was a crack, the Soviets were never a menace, all the U.S. wanted was to keep up its military-industrial complex, the WASP was desperate to keep the Irish Catholic and the Jew out of the rungs of power, etc. etc..All the same, the film manages to pay tribute both to American history and sociology as well as to the greatness of American cinema. Taking care to show a good cross-section of the post-war U.S. society, the film manages a good send-up of the worst of Old Yankee Puritan society in chronicling the devastating effects of hard-line, Manichean detachment on life. Matt Damon's character is appropriately cold and dehumanized, unable to respond to his dutiful and perceptive ("Bonesmen first; God second") wife, played brilliantly by Angelina Jolie. The melodramatic music recounts to great effect the banal but lovable blockbusters of the 1990s, before giving way to the chilling silence of the rude awakening along the path to sophistication.Overall a carefully if a bit too cynically crafted work. It does make for an excellent diversion on an evening when one is feeling nostalgic for times past long before one was in fact born. I certainly enjoyed it on a solitary holiday in NYC on 31 December 2006.

I was a very late getting around to watch to this. I had heard all the rave reviews and thought it was going to be an epic. I decided to see it on VOD over the holiday. Boy, I wish I hadn't. This was a huge disappointment. It was an over-long boring watch. Yes it was stylish, yes it had a great impressive cast, yes, it had great acting, yes it was beautifully filmed and yes it had a huge budget, but it was over-inflated and self indulgent. The characters were one-dimensional and lifeless. The plot was dense and over-complicated. It was difficult to watch, like wading through treacle. Never once did it draw me in. I was not gripped by any part of the plot and I hardly managed to get through it. Matt Damon is a great actor, but his character remains blank and dull and too young to be convincing in this. I just was left feeling blank myself.

It starts on April 16, 1961. Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) is a top American spy. When the Bay of Pigs don't go well, everybody is suspicious of a leak. Then it flashes back to 1939 Yale University. He is a student and recruited by Bill Sullivan (Robert De Niro) to spy on a professor with German ties. He is forced into a shotgun wedding with Margaret (Angelina Jolie). The war starts and he goes to Britain working for the fledging American spy agency. He would become one of the best at counter-intelligence but his family life suffers tremendously with his wife and son (Eddie Redmayne).As far as I'm concern, director Robert De Niro is 2 for 2 so far. Matt Damon puts in a deadly quiet performance. This is no Bond movie. There are no flashy gadgets and movie contraptions. This feels like the real thing. A spy would obviously not talk about spy stuff. The internalization and the paranoia seems to hit the right notes. The family dysfunction follows logically. I guess people who want the excitement will have trouble with the quietness. I personally found it intriguing.