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Film review

'Shepherd' searches for identity

Director Robert De Niro fails to provide focus in this overly long story about the formation of the CIA.

By Steve Persall
Published December 21, 2006

	Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), left, is recruited for the early Central Intelligence Agency by an Army general (Robert De Niro, who also directs) in The Good Shepherd.
[Universal Pictures]

The central character in The Good Shepherd is a cipher, as his Central Intelligence Agency position demands. Yet there needs to be more focus to his story to justify this nearly 3-hour film.

The dramatic sprawl of Robert De Niro's second directing job is so vast that only episodes resonate, not the whole.

De Niro and screenwriter Eric Roth, whose conjecture in Munich had the same problems, can't decide whether their movie should be a historical expose or a grim family epic.

The Good Shepherd doesn't reveal enough for the first or contain enough dramatic importance for the second. Strong performances keep it interesting, but De Niro hasn't created the great film its casting suggests.

Matt Damon doggedly downplays Edward Wilson, a character loosely modeled on CIA co-founder James Angleton. The movie begins in 1961 after the agency's attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro failed. Then it flashes back to 1939, when Edward joins the secret Skull and Bones society as a Yale freshman. This fraternity of privileged future power brokers is depicted as a strange brew of Hasty Pudding-style skits and sinister intentions.

De Niro's presentation is the evidence of his dramatic indecisiveness. Watching future neo-cons prancing in South Pacific costumes then plotting the future is a jarring contradiction made neither ironic nor frightening.

William Hurt makes a suitably distrustful mentor for Edward, whose bland patriotism catches the eye of an Army general De Niro trolling for prospective spies for a new intelligence agency.

As a test, Edward is ordered to check the Nazi party ties of his poetry professor (Michael Gambon). The results end one career and begin another, although their paths cross later in an extraordinary coincidence some viewers simply won't buy. Edward's ascension through CIA ranks is measured by quiet successes; there's no Jason Bourne action for Damon here.

Meanwhile, Edward's personal life is trapped in espionage crossfire. A college romance with a virginal deaf classmate (Tammy Blanchard) can't survive his secretive activities or his seduction by a Skull and Bones member's sister, Clover (Angelina Jolie). A one-night stand results in Edward and Clover's marriage and a son who rarely sees his father. The Good Shepherd becomes a soap opera when the spy stuff starts heating up.

De Niro's generous way with actors never wavers, and they respond with fine work. Period details are sharp, captured by Robert Richardson's camera in more subdued fashion than his signature work with Oliver Stone. It's the unfocused story that fails De Niro, who always seems to have cohesion in his mind but seldom on the screen.

The Good Shepherd

Grade: B-

Director: Robert De Niro

Cast: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, John Turturro, Alec Baldwin, Robert De Niro, Billy Crudup, Michael Gambon, William Hurt, Tammy Blanchard, Joe Pesci, Timothy Hutton

Screenplay: Eric Roth

Rating: R; violence, profanity, sexual situations

Running time: 167 min.

[Last modified December 20, 2006, 10:43:06]