Touches are just enough to earn The Good Shepherd a third star. But De Niro might want to stick to acting in future.
The Good Shepherd (2006)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:161
Fresh:90
Rotten:71
Average Rating:6.1/10
Consensus: This fictitious CIA origin film is an overlong, tedious effort that leaves viewers with more questions than answers.
Runtime: 2 hrs 48 mins
Genre: Dramas
US Box Office: $59,839,040
Synopsis: With THE GOOD SHEPHERD, Robert De Niro (A BRONX TALE) makes an ambitious return to the director's chair. A labor of love for Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (FORREST GUMP), the film tells an... With THE GOOD SHEPHERD, Robert De Niro (A BRONX TALE) makes an ambitious return to the director's chair. A labor of love for Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (FORREST GUMP), the film tells an epic, fictionalized account of how the Central Intelligence Agency was born. Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, a reserved young man who graduated from Yale in the late 1930s. His membership in the exclusive, hidden Skull and Bones society led him away from poetry and into a relationship with the federal government, who recruited him to help them on several covert operations. Roth's script alternates between Wilson's gradual emergence as a genuine government operative in the early 1940s and the infamous Bay of Pigs conflict in the early 1960s. Along the way, he has a sweet romance with a pretty deaf girl (a sparkling Tammy Blanchard) and ends up marrying the woman he impregnates (Angelina Jolie) out of a strong sense of duty. Throughout the film, the emergence of a mysterious tape haunts Wilson, who is determined to uncover the truth behind a leak in his secret organization. Production designer Jeannine Claudia Oppewall (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN) and costume designer Ann Roth (THE ENGLISH PATIENT, THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY) faithfully recreate these earlier periods in American history, while the imagery of Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson (J.F.K., THE AVIATOR) casts a warm, stately glow upon De Niro's assembled cast of luminaries (including Alec Baldwin, Michael Gambon, William Hurt, Billy Crudup, and Joe Pesci). The result is a production that recalls Francis Ford Coppola's THE CONVERSATION and Steven Spielberg's MUNICH. [More]
Starring: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Joe Pesci, John Turturro
Starring: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Joe Pesci, John Turturro, Keir Dullea, Alec Baldwin, Michael Gambon, Billy Crudup, William Hurt, Liya Kebede, Gabriel Macht, Jason Patric, Eddie Redmayne, Sándor Técsy
Director: Robert De Niro
Director: Robert De Niro
Producer: Jane Rosenthal
Studio: Universal Pictures
Reviews for The Good Shepherd
A wan, muted film that is never less than interesting, but rarely more than that either.
It's well built but the Matt Damon character remains blank and too young to be convincing. It's solid, but like Damon himself it's a bit dull.
A very dark, murky film, resentfully critical of the dysfunctional CIA family.
Damon's shirts are always crisp, but he has the charisma of a perfectly groomed corpse.
A serious film about a seriously relevant subject that, despite its flaws, fulfils much of its over-reaching ambition.
De Niro's second film features terrific performances and several impressive scenes, but he appears to have forgotten to hire an editor.
Well-crafted and well-acted, but ever-so-slightly worthy and strangely unaffecting. Given the track record of the CIA, it probably ought to be angrier.
Intelligent, yes, politically astute, stuffed to the gills with A-list acting talent (overstuffed in fact, there are cameos a go-go), but too frozen with a sense of its own seriousness to grip.
The film’s watchable enough if you’re indulgent of its flaws but at 167 minutes it does tax the patience.
Overlong and a little overstuffed, but De Niro’s ambitious tale of the CIA’s Cold War genesis is still worthy, smart and relevant.
A slick and classy production, dripping with talent and expensive production values.
The Good Shepherd feels authentic because it keeps everything on a human scale. There's no mythologizing the agency; there's just a solid depiction of how it was shaped by human beings.
It's a risky narrative strategy, and if it's not always riveting, it is apt: defined by his secrets, Edward recedes from his own story.
Hardly a lightning bolt, and hardly one that deserves 160 deadening minutes of misdirection and repetition.
At nearly three hours, the reach is so vast the movie never finds its shape.
No previous American film has ventured into this still largely unknown territory with such authority and emotional detachment. For this reason alone, The Good Shepherd is must-see viewing.
Latest News for The Good Shepherd
July 07, 2008:
De Niro Looking for More Good Shepherds ![]()
It played to lukewarm reviews and middling box office, but Robert De Niro still wants to follow up The Good Shepherd with a pair of sequels. More...
March 04, 2008:
Rush Hour 3 Takes '07 DVD Rental Crown
It may not have been quite the box-office phenomenon that its predecessors were -- and critics may have disliked it enough to keep it down at 20 percent on the Tomatometer --... More...
December 20, 2007:
Box Office Guru Preview: Five New Films Fight For Holiday Cheer
Moviegoers are in for a feast as studios will unleash a wide menu of new options on Friday trying to reach holiday patrons on the weekend before Santa comes to town. With so... More...
January 15, 2007:
Box Office Guru Wrapup: "Stomp" Steps All Over New Releases
Stomping into the number one spot over the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend was the college dance drama "Stomp the Yard," which grossed an estimated $22M in... More...
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