Not Much Heart In This Shepherd

Illawarra Mercury

Thursday February 22, 2007

JAMES JOYCE

THE GOOD SHEPHERD (M)

Stars: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie,

John Turturro, William Hurt

Director: Robert De Niro

*** 1/2

Screening: Greater Union Shellharbour, Gala Warrawong

Robert De Niro explores the formation of the CIA with a steely gaze and chilling intensity that could be the directorial equivalent of one of his performances.

For only his second outing as a director, the acclaimed actor offers a fictionalised account of one man's rise through the ranks of the United States spy machine and the heavy toll his all-consuming profession has on his family.

MattDamon plays Edward Wilson, a student at Yale who is recruited by the FBI to spy on one of his professors (Michael Gambon), a suspected Nazi sympathiser.

At the outbreak of World War II, Wilson is recruited into the Office of Strategic Services and dispatched to war-torn London where he becomes a cold, calculating counter-intelligence agent trading secrets and lies for America and learning to trust no one.

At the end of the war, the Russians are the new enemy and so Wilson becomes a founding member of the new CIA, charged with untangling webs of political intrigue spun by the Soviets.

The film opens in Washington DC in 1961 as the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba goes pear-shaped.

Wilson must find out what went wrong and his best clue is a photograph and an audio tape delivered anonymously to his door.

As his forensics team pinpoints, piece by painstaking piece, what the blurry image and fuzzy conversation mean, Wilson reflects on his life.

At 167 minutes, The Good Shepherd is long, slow and told in overlapping flashbacks that demand the viewer stay alert as the plot jumps back and forth from the 1930s to the 1960s and points in between.

There's lots of talking and little action.

Expect much shuffling of files marked top secret, characters peering through blinds, images of men in fedoras and long coats lurking in shadowy alleyways and music that conveys sinister foreboding.

While Damon doesn't age all that convincingly over the film's latter stages, he makes the perfect blank canvas for De Niro's fascinating portrait of patriotism at any cost.

Looking like the all-American boy scout as straight as his side parting, Damon's stone-faced stare doesn't arouse much sympathy until near the end, by which time his grown son has become tragically entangled in agency business.

The supporting cast, which incudes John Turturro, William Hurt, Alec Baldwin, Billy Crudup, Joe Pesci and De Niro, is excellent.

Less convincing is Angelina Jolie, cast against type as Wilson's neglected wife.

The Good Shepherd's sober attention to detail leaves little room for heart.

But it's a handsome, eloquent, intricately crafted history lesson compelling in the same way as George Clooney's Good Night and Good Luck.

© 2007 Illawarra Mercury

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