The Good Sheperd feels like it escaped from a parallel world that never experienced the one-two punch of Jaws and Star Wars and instead based its blockbuster formula on The Godfathers.
Comment
12/21/06
The Good Shepherd (2006)
56
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
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... [More]
Starring: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Joe Pesci, John Turturro
Director: Robert De Niro
Reviews for The Good Shepherd
121 - 140 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
The Good Shepherd is drama at its best, a complex meditation on the freedoms we take for granted and proof that just a little information about how we maintain them is way too much.
12/21/06
Director Robert DeNiro also brings in the human side of the story without making it feel like an intruder, or a snoozer.
12/21/06
ambitious, multilayered
12/21/06
There are no impeccably tailored dinner jackets to wear while sipping stirred martinis, no brainy bombshells to seduce, no cool gadgets, no sportscars. This is dirty -- in all senses of the word -- tradecraft.
12/21/06
Robert De Niro's sophomore directorial effort is so subdued that in the end it feels like nothing of significance has happened.
12/21/06
De Niro is endlessly fascinated with the birth and evolution of the Central Intelligence Agency, but his film is such a mind-numbing bore that it is impossible to recommend.
12/21/06
Directed by Robert De Niro, The Good Shepherd is an origin story about the C.I.A., and for the filmmakers that story boils down to fathers who fail their sons.
12/21/06
Top CriticA meandering, near-three-hour epic that tries hard but basically fails to be The Godfather of CIA movies.
12/21/06
The Good Shepherd is serious adult moviemaking, a truly surprising effort from De Niro, a man deeply interested in the art, craft and psychology of espionage.
12/21/06
Top CriticThe Good Shepherd does occasionally strike the right, creepy note.
12/21/06
Except for helping you maintain a consistently slow pulse rate, The Good Shepherd isn't good for much.
12/21/06
It has a fascinating central character and the right actor playing him, with an excellent supporting cast (Michael Gambon? Alec Baldwin? Timothy Hutton? All great.). But it hasn't figured out where to take the story.
12/21/06
DeNiro's direction is masterful here - he uses "The Godfather" as his structural and thematic template yet tonally his film is as cool as its predecessor is hot.
12/21/06
Many things happen in The Good Shepherd, but very few of them are especially interesting or, more to the point, memorable.
12/21/06
Though illuminating as a history primer on the CIA, The Good Shepherd has the spark of an 8 a.m. college lecture.
12/21/06
Imagine a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant version of the first two Godfather movies drained of operatic passion but left with all their epochal sweep, double-dealing violence and richly detailed verisimilitude.
12/21/06
It's a rare occasion when you emerge from a sprawling three-hour movie thinking about how much they left out.
12/21/06
This rangy spy saga, odd but not unrewarding, oscillates between murmured, hushed skullduggery and the eerie quiet of its central character.
12/21/06
It turtles forward for 160 minutes with unrelenting, humorless solemnity, as if everyone involved were unaware that it has arrived three decades too late to matter.
12/21/06
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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