The Good Shepherd (Widescreen Edition)

I couldn't find anything in this film remotely entertaining about this film. Sure some facts are meticulous, but as far as ever caring about any of these characters-nada. It's just slightly better than Clooney's Syriana. At least I was able to make heads or tails what was going on in this one. I just still didn't care. Pass this one by if you can.

This is a very boring movie. Endless dialogue that leads to nowhere. The character development is poor. The plot is confusing and unrealistic. This is painful to watch... 2 hours and 48 minutes of agony on a screen.

This film will find a passionate audience among those looking for an intellectual, adult and intense experience.

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 its understated events and emphasis on character. It's a noble endeavor, at times wonderfully shot - however, it is ultimately too flawed to succeed as entertainment.
The story revolves around the creation of the CIA, seen through the eyes of Edward Wilson (a composite of several real life characters). It plays as a character driven story showing what can make a man choose a life of permanent paranoia and secrecy, and the impact that has on his life. In this way the atmosphere around the time of the new Agency's genesis is portrayed rather than a strict blow by blow account of how it came to be. A superb and committed cast have been gathered, (including a blink and you'll miss it cameo from Joe Pesci), and there is a clear feeling of the proceedings oozing talent, from art direction and photography, through to actors and music.
However, there is something about the pacing that is not quite right - at 160 minutes, we should have some significant moments of drama to drive our interest on, but somehow we are left with a spy story of non-people and non-events... a spy movie without suspense. There's an interesting enough story arc for our main character, and the audience is asked to be intelligent enough to fill in some gaps - but the padding has turned what could have been an atmospheric and informative movie into something bloated and dull. This is no epic or definitive account.
Regular readers of mine will know I am no huge fan of rapid fire MTV style editing a la `Armageddon' and its ilk - but a movie still has to have some drive and entertainment value. That's missing here, despite the core having some very interesting things to say about the disease of loneliness and what it does to a man. Sad to say, no endorsement from me on this one, even though it has moments that really make me want to like it.

Interesting, if disquieting, view of the kind of organization apparently necessary to a nation to stay afloat in today's world: Situation ethics; disposable loyalties; diverse and highly sophisticated technological tools; unswerving but troubling idealisms; personal costs to participants in anguish and guilt; incremental compromises of original principles; patriotic ruthlessness.... Our eventual realization that both our friends and our enemies have similar organizations, for similar reasons, creates in us, the viewers, a more-in-sadness-than-in-anger awareness that parallel organizations have probably always existed and, of necessity, probably always will. The film's dialogue is often muffled, oblique, and hard to understand---in keeping with its atmosphere of secrecy---but the viewer thereby tends to lose the detail thread of what's going on at the moment. A film to watch several times, but not one where the viewer ends up envying the participants' lives.