RottenTomatoes.com
Log In | Register | What is RT?
Found a Bug? Squash It! Report Bugs Here
  • Home
  • Movies
  • DVD
  • Celebrities
  • News
  • Critics
  • Trailers & Pictures
  • CommunityBeta
  • Box Office
  • | In Theaters
  • | Opening
  • | Upcoming
  • | Best Of
  • | Certified Fresh
RT Search Powered by Google
help icon Enhanced RT
searches on Google
Click here to turn on enhanced search results from RT on your Google searches.
 
Movies / Upcoming / The Good Shepherd
The Good Shepherd

Rate this Movie Help Icon

  • Write a Review
  • Read Reviews
  • Add to List
  • Buy Poster External Icon
  • Visit Official Site External Icon
Bookmark and Share

The Good Shepherd (2006)

  • T-Meter Critics
  • Top Critics
  • RT Community
  • My Critics
  • My Friends
56 %
Tomatometer
Template ImageTemplate Image

How does the Tomatometer work Help Icon

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

[See More Credits]

  • Trailers
  • Pictures
  • Trailer
    >
    Exclusive Clip: English Intelligence
    >
    Milt Bearden
    >
    John Turturro
    >
  • Matt Damon
    >
    Robert De Niro
    >
1 - 4 of 6

See More Movie Trailers & Pictures

Reviews for The Good Shepherd

  • T-Meter Critics
  • Top Critics
  • RT Community
  • My Critics
  • My Friends
 
 
141 - 160 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
Text View | |< << 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 >> >|
Arrange By:Fresh | Rotten | Comments | Name | Source | Date
 
 

[Robert De Niro has] made one of the best pictures of the year.

Full Review Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution | comment Comment
12/21/06
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

As impenetrable as the [CIA] itself.

Full Review Source: Metromix.com | comment Comment
12/21/06
Matt Pais
Matt Pais
Metromix.com

If Robert De Niro had directed 'Casino Royale,' Bond wouldhave been suitable for Masterpiece Theater. And that's nota compliment.

Full Review Source: Compuserve | comment Comment
12/21/06
Harvey S. Karten
Harvey S. Karten
Compuserve

Daniel Craig rarely stopped flexing as the new James Bond; here Matt Damon hardly moves a muscle.

Full Review Source: Sun Publications (Chicago, IL) | comment Comment
12/21/06
Josh Larsen
Josh Larsen
Sun Publications (Chicago, IL)

Robert De Niro made up for lost time by making "The Good Shepherd," a film that feels like it takes 13 years to watch.That's an exaggeration. The sprawling, 160-minute epic only feels like it takes seven hours.

Full Review Source: Arizona Daily Star | comment 2 Comments
12/21/06
Phil Villarreal
Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star

It’s almost impossible to buy Wilson as a pioneer who helped shape one of the world’s most intricate and devious intelligence agencies, leaving us to wonder how the CIA could ever have gotten off the ground through the labors of such an utter stiff.

Full Review Source: L.A. Weekly | comment Comment
12/20/06
Ella Taylor
Ella Taylor
L.A. Weekly

Clocking in at nearly three hours, The Good Shepherd is a numbing history of the C.I.A. that leaves you Novocained.

Full Review Source: New York Observer | comment Comment
12/20/06
Rex Reed
Rex Reed
New York Observer

The sort of le Carre that even le Carre doesn't write anymore, but without the British accent...a solemn but compulsively fascinating puzzle.

Full Review Source: One Guy's Opinion | comment Comment
12/20/06
Frank Swietek
Frank Swietek
One Guy's Opinion

The type of movie that would probably improve with repeat viewings, but God only knows who could sit through this experience twice.

Full Review Source: ComingSoon.net | comment Comment
12/20/06
Edward Douglas
Edward Douglas
ComingSoon.net

The problem is that De Niro nails a particularly emotionless, chilly, paranoid tone -- and then stubbornly refuses to modulate it for damn near three hours.

Full Review Source: Philadelphia Weekly | comment Comment
12/20/06
Sean Burns
Sean Burns
Philadelphia Weekly

It's the story of the season: Trim about a half-hour and you could turn a good movie into a great one.

Full Review Source: Associated Press | comment Comment
12/19/06
Christy Lemire
Christy Lemire
Associated Press

As long as it is, Shepherd speeds through its leading man's life, cramming in 30 years without elaborating on any of them.

Full Review Source: Village Voice | comment Comment
12/19/06
Robert Wilonsky
Robert Wilonsky
Village Voice

A cinematic still-birth.

Full Review Source: Planet Sick-Boy | comment Comment
12/19/06
Jon Popick
Jon Popick
Planet Sick-Boy

The Good Shepherd is equally fascinating as a character drama and as a cold war thriller.

Full Review Source: ReelViews | comment Comment
12/18/06
James Berardinelli
James Berardinelli
ReelViews

One of the most impressive movies ever made about espionage.

Full Review Source: New Yorker | comment Comment
12/18/06
David Denby
David Denby
New Yorker
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

"The Good Shepherd" is all about tone and the stoic atmosphere of secrets and lies that protects U.S. government agents. It's about a milieu of insidious self-important people in positions of power who took advantage of their autonomy.

Full Review Source: ColeSmithey.com | comment Comment
12/18/06
Cole Smithey
Cole Smithey
ColeSmithey.com

Ostensibly the untold story of the birth of the C.I.A., Robert De Niro's film is really the most mundane psychological profile of the year.

Full Review Source: Slant Magazine | comment Comment
12/16/06
Ed Gonzalez
Ed Gonzalez
Slant Magazine

It's tough to slog through a movie that has no pulse.

Full Review Source: Rolling Stone | comment 6 Comments
12/15/06
Peter Travers
Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

Excessive running time (168 minutes) and deliberate pace are not the problem of De Niro's ambitious saga--it's the lack of a proper dramatic paradigm to illustrate vividly what often comes across as history lecture, though the facts are fascinating.

Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com | comment Comment
12/15/06
Emanuel Levy
Emanuel Levy
EmanuelLevy.Com

A buttoned-up, shadowy dramatic recounting of the early days of the buttoned-up, shadowy Central Intelligence Agency.

Full Review Source: Entertainment Weekly | comment Comment
12/13/06
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly
 
 
141 - 160 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
Text View | |< << 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 >> >|
all

Latest News for The Good Shepherd

July 07, 2008: De Niro Looking for More Good Shepherds Opens in new window
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...

See All

More Movies

Coming Soon in Australia
Tomatometer Percentage Movie Date

68% 68% Sherlock Holmes 26/12
40% 40% The Lovely Bones 26/12
100% 100% The French Kissers 26/12
85% 85% Bright Star 26/12
87% 87% Nowhere Boy 26/12
18% 18% Alvin and the Chipmunk… 26/12
10% 10% Did You Hear About the… 26/12
05% 05% Old Dogs 26/12

What’s Hot On RT

New Alice Trailer

New Alice Trailer

Tim Burton returns to the rabbit hole

20 Must-See Films

20 Must-See Films

Your essential Summer Movie Guide

James Cameron

James Cameron

We look at the Avatar director's career

Golden Globes!

Golden Globes!

See who got nominated for the awards

Other News

  • Top Stories
  • Popular
  • Interviews
 
 

Comments

 
 
Top Stories
Headlines Comments
  
  • Bryan Singer Returning to X-Men for First Class Source: Superhero Hype
102
  • Mark Strong Talks Kick-Ass, John Carter, and Robin Hood Source: Collider.com
1
  • How Avatar Happened: The Path to Innovation Source: CinemaBlend.com
19
  • Rob Marshall Says Pirates 4 Is Still a Maybe Source: ComingSoon.net
32
  • ET Teases Iron Man 2 Teaser Source: Collider.com
28
  • Tobey Maguire Refutes Hobbit Rumors Source: Hollywood Reporter
9
  • Prince of Persia Featurette Posted Source: Yahoo! Movies
4
  • Trailer Bulletin: Robin Hood Source: ComingSoon.net
61
  • Mel Gibson Plans a Mexican Vacation Source: Variety
8
  • New Iron Man 2 Clue Posted Source: Screen Rant
26
Popular
Headlines Comments
  
  • Critics Consensus: Avatar Is Certified Fresh
204
  • Awards Tour 2009: Golden Globe Noms Here!
145
  • Total Recall: James Cameron Movies
88
  • Box Office Guru Wrapup: Girlpower Rules Again with Princess at #1
70
  • Awards Tour 2009: Inglourious Basterds Lead Critics Choice Noms
44
  • Awards Tour 2009: SAG Nominations Are In!
39
  • Awards Tour 2009: Avatar Best Picture at NYFCO!
38
  • Weekly Ketchup: Bryan Singer Teaches X-Men: First Class
20
  • Awards Tour 2009: The Hurt Locker Dominates Boston Society of Film Critics
18
  • Awards Tour 2009: LAFCA: The Hurt Locker Tops List
12
Interviews
Headlines Comments
  
  • Robert Downey Jr. talks Sherlock Holmes & Iron Man 2 - RT Interview
21
  • Director Ruben Fleischer Talks Zombieland
2
  • "I Don't Hate Women": Lars von Trier on Antichrist
17
  • Eric Bana talks Love the Beast - RT Interview
12
  • Fight Club Sound Designer Reflects on Film's 10th Anniversary
23
  • James Schamus talks Taking Woodstock - RT Interview
8
  • RT on DVD: Wassup, Bruno
3
  • Scott Hicks Talks The Boys Are Back
0
  • John Hurt Talks Harry Potter, Quentin Crisp and Alien - The RT Interview
15
  • Richard Kelly chats about The Box
2
 
 

Sponsored Links

Around The Network

  • The Good Shepherd at Rotten Tomatoes
  • The Good Shepherd at IGN
  • The Good Shepherd at AskMen

Fresh Links

Featured
40 Best Films of the 2000s
40 Best Films of the 2000s External Link

Last week, Moviefone offered us their worst films of the 2000s. Now see their 40 best!

Worst Hollywood Remakes of the Decade
Worst Hollywood Remakes of the Decade External Link

Movieline gets bravely swept away with the recycled refuse of the 2000s.

Follow Rotten Tomatoes on Twitter
Follow Rotten Tomatoes on Twitter External Link

Get all the latest movie updates, reviews, interviews and features here.

Competitions
Win Alvin and the Chipmunks 2 prize packs
Win Alvin and the Chipmunks 2 prize packs External Link

We're giving away a bunch of stuff from the upcoming Squeakquel.

 
 
About| Site Map| Help| RT To Go| Contact Us| Critics Submission| Linking to RT| Licensing| Movie List| Celebs List| Newsletter
IGN Logo

IGN.com | GameSpy | Comrade | Arena | FilePlanet | GameSpy Technology
TeamXbox | Planets | Vaults | VE3D | CheatsCodesGuides | GameStats | GamerMetrics
AskMen.com | Rotten Tomatoes | Direct2Drive | Green Pixels


By continuing past this page, and by the continued use of this site, you agree to be bound by and abide by the User Agreement.
Copyright 1998-2009, IGN Entertainment, Inc. About IGN | Support | Advertise | Privacy Policy | User Agreement | Subscribe to RT's XML feed! IGN RSS Feeds
IGN's enterprise databases running Oracle, SQL and MySQL are professionally monitored and managed by Pythian Remote DBA
Certain product data ©1995-present Muze, Inc. For personal use only. All rights reserved.