Saturday, April 28, 2007

The Good Shepherd: Review

One would think that the birth and initial years of the CIA would be a subject that would be fairly easy to make into an interesting, exciting film that would provide a good amount of tension and character for the audience to sink their teeth into. Oh, how wrong we are, as with The Good Shepherd, Robert De Niro has seemingly found a way to avoid any of that, leaving in his wake an overlong, undeveloped bore that save for a single performance, would be nothing short of a complete waste of three hours. The performance, put forth by Matt Damon, is the sole guiding light in a film that accomplishes so little in its running time that one finds it difficult to understand exactly why it had to be so long.

What makes this so painful to stomach is the fact that De Niro had proven himself a competent director with A Bronx Tale, by no means a masterpiece but certainly passable, and the skills that he displayed there are so conspicuously missing here. One would think that, given his superior acting background, he could at least garner some interesting performances from his skilled cast. Rather, his actors seem to be sleepwalking for most of the film, their performances wooden and devoid of emotion, except for Angelina Jolie's bizarre outbursts but we'll get to those later. Damon is the only person whose performance is stellar and he single handily attempts to carry the monumental weight of the film. Unfortunately, by the conclusion, the film's proven too difficult for even a seasoned veteran to make interesting, although we shouldn't fault Damon for trying. Everyone else ranges from downright dull to simply solid, never spectacular, a massive disappointment given the combined resumes of the performers.


When a cast is so dull, one has to look to two individuals, the screenwriter and director for blame and The Good Shepherd is no different. De Niro takes Eric Roth's minimalist script and sucks out whatever life was on the page. Now, it is unclear as to what was cut from the film for release and what role that would have played in the overall, finished product but as The Good Shepherd is, it is either way too short for all the characters and themes it deals with or it is way too long and needed massive cuts, eliminating entire characters from the film. The film feels more like a shell than a completed picture, with a cold, stern emotional core that despite its two hour, 40 minute run time, feels like an untapped resource. Whenever De Niro tries to elicit a response, the music swells and the melodrama ratchets up. One would think that De Niro had more cinematic sense and talent than Mel Gibson but apparently, they both went to the same school of over the top, under skilled directing.

The audience is left in the dark about why these people are so detached. The marriage of Damon's Edward Wilson and his wife, Angelina Jolie's Margaret Russell, is nothing short of confounding and the only time you see these two people, they are in the midst of an argument but it is never clear as to why. Their relationship is so underdeveloped in every way that the audience feels nothing about their suffering marriage, just that Jolie would get off the screen as soon as possible. Her performance is a resounding disappointment and short of Girl Interrupted, has now gone almost an entire career without making something worthwhile. It is amazing that more people don't realize this, but her creative output has been dismal for over 10 years now. Equally as bad is Eddie Redmayne's performance as Edward and Margaret’s son. By the film's end, I was rooting so hardly for Damon to leave his family just so I wouldn't have to spend any more time with their performances. While it is easy to recognize Roth and De Niro trying to show the destructive nature of the CIA for its employee's family lives, it is handled with subtlety of a kick to the groin and seems pained and heavy. I felt like I had a firmer grasp on the effects of espionage on one's personal life when I was watching Damon's other spy flicks, the Bourne series, than I ever did in The Good Shepherd.


Speaking of which, the Bourne series has more entertainment value in its opening 5 minutes than The Good Shepherd does in its unwieldy runtime. De Niro and Roth take this material so seriously that they forgot that there had to have been some laughter in the opening days of the CIA. No one could possibly go that long without a single moment of happiness in their lives and still get up every morning. To the best of my memory, Damon's steely exterior doesn't crack once and he wears a grimace the entire movie, never even bothering to give a hint of a smile. Maybe it's because he's spending too much time and energy watching his co-stars dismal performances, realizing that he could have been hanging out with Clooney and Pitt as opposed to making this underwhelming, undercooked, dull as dirt "thriller" with no heart.

**/*****

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