The Good Shepherd

Back in 1993 Robert De Niro decided to have a stab at direction... the result of this venture was A Bronx Tale, an underrated coming-of-age film featuring sincere performances and a snappy storyline. Nearly fifteen years later, De Niro has directed his second film - The Good Shepherd, an ambitious insiders-history of the CIA that assembles a massive cast of big names, including some six-Oscar winning actors.

Edward (Matt Damon) is a high-ranking CIA agent investigating the fallout of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in the early 1960s. It seems there is an traitor within the CIA, and this is compounded by an enigmatic surveillance tape anonymously dropped off on his doorstep. From here we cut between the current investigation and Edward's rise within the organisation, from his induction into the secret society known as Skull and Bones to his involvement in WWII espionage and the eventual creation of the CIA.

There's a lot to take in with this movie... essentially, there are two major plotlines at work in regards to Edward's life. His work in the spy world, and his intermittant association with his family life. These twin storylines are mostly seperate for the bulk of the film, feeling more akin to a biopic than a fictionalised account of real events, but in the last half an hour they come together quite succinctly when Edward is put in the ultimate compromising position. Alongside this, we are given a tour of the Bay of Pigs disaster, the rise of Nazism, the outbreak of WWII and America's involvement in the cleanup afterwards, and, of course, the Cold War.

The film starts off impressively, jumping right into the deep end with a long, constantly-moving series of short intercut scenes highlighting the motivating thrust of the film before settling back into a more formal set-up involving Matt Damon's character. It's an ambitious film, and I think it probably would've benefitted from a bit of a trim. The main problem is that Damon's character is so purposefully unemotional, and his peformance at times so lifeless, that it becomes grating. In a film that aims to be realistic about the world of spies, taking in a large cast of characters and focusing more on dark backroom exploits, it isn't really smart to have a protagonist that's so uninteresting.

De Niro highlights themes of trust throughout his opus, playing upon the issue on both a personal level and a covert ops level for the protagonist, but it just ends up feeling weightless when you care so little for the character. The film also takes in themes of secrecy, elitism, control and playing God, but once again - we're too unattached for it to hold any weight. We're also shown many details in regards to surveillance tecniques and the paranoia the infects the world of these powerul men, and the sequences involving the anonymous tape are particularlyreminiscent of Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (which isn't really a bad thing).

It's not all loose bolts though, the vision De Niro gives us of the CIA as a clandestine world of knowledge and power brokered by secret society meetings, and featuring lots of darkened back rooms filled with surveillance footage, is impressive and chilling. The paranoia and despicability of the organisation is well-handled too, at one point they even drop locusts on communist crops to ensure capitalism keeps on top. And if there's one scene in this film that let me know that De Niro is a worthy director despite his missteps it's the disturbing torture scene where John Turturro interrogates a Russian defector... it also reminded me what a great and under-used actor Turturro is too.

The all-star cast should keep even the most unattentive of viewers marginally interested... among those who turn up are Robert De Niro, Timothy Hutton, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, Billy Crudup, Michael Gambon and William Hurt. Joe Pesci also makes his first screen appearance in eight years. Anyway, underneath it's flaws there's a great film here. De Niro might have bitten off more than he can chew but he's to be commended for his ambition and between this film and A Bronx Tale there's ample evidence of some directorial talent that deserves to be tapped some more.

DIRECTOR: Robert De Niro
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Eric Roth, drawing on the stories of many real people who were involved in the early history of the CIA.
KEY ACTORS: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, Tammy Blanchard, Billy Crudup, Robert De Niro, Michael Gambon, William Hurt, Joe Pesci, Timothy Hutton, John Turturro

RELATED TEXTS:
- Eric Roth was inspired to write his screenplay by the fictional CIA chronicle Harlot's Ghost.
- De Niro drew upon the Cold War thrillers Smiley's People, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and The Third Man as primary sources of inspiration.
- See also JFK and Thirteen Days, which cover some of the same material.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominated Best Art Direction.