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Matt Damon |
Slow-burning spy film from De Niro
THE GOOD SHEPHERD
Directed by Robert De Niro
Certificate 15
HERE we have a political pot boiler for those of you who enjoyed triple history lessons at school.
However, if reliving such lessons are not your idea of a Friday night out, then it may be best to wait for the DVD of The Good Shepherd to come out.
As you would expect of a film directed by Robert De Niro, it has super production values and is lovely to look at. The superb costumes, cars and backdrops all add to this elongated plot about the early days of the CIA building up to the monumental stitch up that was the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
Throw in such names as Michael Gambon, William Hurt, Alec Baldwin and De Niro’s Goodfellas chum Joe Pesci and the cast have the form to make this Cold War caper a winner.
But what worries is the script’s inability to tease out a bit of action. It all meanders a little too slowly at times. I like my spy films to have at least a hint of Bond about them.
The story, told through flashbacks, is basically the life and times of an operative who was there at the start.
We meet Edward (Matt Damon) who is a popular and successful Yale student and comes to the attentions of the military after he provides information on the Nazi-sympathising professor (Gambon).
It unlocks the door to the Mob – this time being the precursor to the CIA – rather than De Niro’s normal gangsters. But the same rules apply, and the hand of De Niro, guided by executive producers Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorcese, conjure up an idea that there is little difference between the two rackets, namely being the idea of keeping yourself to yourself and treat your moll with disdain.
Wilson’s home life is about as messy as the attempt to over throw the Cuban government. We are taken by the hand through some of the significant moments of his career – going to Yale college, a shotgun wedding, and then a means of escape his wife (Angelina Jolie) by travelling to post-war Berlin to work for the intelligence agency.
He returns six years later, and it is not a happy home coming. His son doesn’t know who he is and his wife clearly doesn’t love him, facts we are supposed to care about, but considering his behaviour, is hard to build up a tear for our hero.
The build up to the Bay of Pigs lends a historical anchorage – Wilson’s attempts to find out why the invasion failed so spectacularly is the main root of the story – but we are very much side-tracked by the homespun heartache De Niro uses to make this film seem a tad long. |
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