The Good Shepherd

Robert De Niro’s latest foray into directing, The Good Shepherd, is an aggressively precise but brilliantly calculated thriller in the vein of The Godfather and The Conversation. Its exactness and excessive detail play to wearying results in the film’s meandering first half, but there is a satisfying conclusion waiting ahead that strings together almost all of the seemingly erroneous plotlines. It would be difficult to really appreciate what you’re seeing the first time around since so much meaning is built only once you’ve reached the film’s end, but there is ultimately such a sense of completion that you’re nearly willing to forgive the difficulties of the opening act. Clearly screenwriter Eric Roth knew what he was doing, but perhaps he overestimated just how interesting his script could be without the insights still to come. You can’t help but feel when watching this film that all of the strenuously plotted events that take place are simply fodder for the show stopping finale.

It’s this final half of the film that brings together all the strands of narrative and lands itself squarely on target. Without over sharing, I’ll simply say that Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, a privileged student at Yale who goes on to become one of the founding members of the CIA. His wife (Angelina Jolie) and family become victims of his deceptive business and over the course of many years his own callousness bleeds one into the other to horrifying effect. The real pleasure of this film is its darkly fascinating depiction of a dying soul. Wilson’s concern and compassion slowly diminish over time and with wonderful subtlety, Damon and De Niro chronicle the character from a wide-eyed idealist into a wounded antihero looking only to do his job.

The Good Shepherd is an enviable cinematic achievement, but it’s also a difficult film to really settle into and enjoy. However, even its drifting and unclear moments are handled with such meticulousness that it is hard to critique the film for complexity. It means to be complex and it succeeds. I only wish that it was consistently engaging and more attentive to the needs of its audience. Even the most enthusiastic viewer is not likely to be instantly enthralled or touched by this slick, hard hearted film. It takes time and endurance to find its inner values, much like the secretive man at its center.

Grade: A-