The Good Shepherd
Rated: R
The story follows Wilson from his days at Yale all the way to the post-mortem of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. While the aging make-up is almost non-existent, Damon shows for the second time this year (the first being his villainous dirty cop of The Departed) that he is one of the best actors working today. Wilson is a man of secrets and must wear a constant poker face and have a voice without inflection. And yet Damon manages to speak volumes through his silences. Everything Wilson does is covert rather than overt but if you’re paying attention, you’ll see what’s going on beneath the surface. De Niro deserves great credit for crafting a film that perfectly mirrors Wilson’s clandestine demeanor. The film is rarely intimate and filled with stark and gloomy navy-grey hues. The film goes around the world but every place feels faded and empty. And yet much like Wilson, you can see what’s behind the façade as long as you’re paying attention. Unfortunately, much like Wilson’s wife (Angelina Jolie), by keeping us a distance for the entire story, it begins to become a chore to keep penetrating each scene to just have a basic understanding of Wilson’s motivations and the machinations of the spy game he plays. The film’s craftsmanship also has a few cracks in Jolie’s one-dimensional, long-suffering-wife character as well the passing of secret messages which transform the film from being a cloak-and-dagger tale of Godfather-like proportions to world’s longest and most deadly-serious episode of Mission: Impossible. The Good Shepherd requires a lot from its audience. We must follow not only the complicated series of intrigues, shaded loyalties, and outright betrayals, but then go deeper if we want to understand the motivations, desires, hopes, and dreams of the man who leads us through almost every scene. Some may enjoy the challenge and find the film to be an ultimately reward experience, but by the end, I was just exhausted. Words by |
