The Good Shepherd
What do you get when you put together an incredible cast and a poor history?
The tumultuous early history of the Central Intelligence Agency is viewed through the prism of one man’s life.
The movie tries to follow the events between the years of 1940-something and the creation of the CIA in 1964. To do that, the director decided to mix later events with past events, like showing the normal day of the main character, Edward Wilson, doing some normal stuff, like going to work and then, suddenly, you get a flashback completely unrelated to what is going on. In a way, what the director may tried is do some cutting like “Pulp Fiction” but, in the end, created a story that is really terrible to follow.
Acting is impressive. Almost all main actors play themselves in different stages of live, with different ages. And the changes are not so apparent, like white hair: they change their clothes and their behaviour and you see them looking older. The really impressive one in the list is Angelina Joile: she really manages to look like a young girl in the beginning of the movie and like a 40-something mum in the end, but that’s all she could do — it is not as impressive acting as Matt Damon or Robert De Niro or anyone else. She is no convincing (and everybody else is).
So, in one hand you have some pretty solid acting and, in the other, a poor story with a bad direction. I would recommend this movie only if you like American history, really love Matt Damon or is an American in your 60-something.
