Dir.
Robert De Niro , US, 2006, 167 mins
Cast: Matt Damon, Robert De Niro, Angelina Jolie
Review by Carol Allen
This is an ambitious
project – the
story of the CIA, dramatised with fictional and some real
life characters. The central character Edward Wilson (Damon),
through whose eyes the story is told, is apparently loosely
based on a real life founder operative. The title refers
to the biblical passage:“I am the good shepherd. The
good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”
The story's 20-odd year time scale is framed by the Bay of
Pigs crisis in 1961, when Wilson's job is to find the "mole" in
the service who has leaked vital information. It then goes
into flashback starting with Wilson's student days at Yale
in 1939, where he is recruited into the “Skull and
Bones”, a sort of Freemason-type secret society, which
throws interesting light on the American class system and
how the monied classes control the power.
When war breaks out in Europe, he is recruited by General
Sullivan (De Niro) into the Office of Strategic Services,
with a brief to co-operate with and learn from the British
using their long experience of the spying trade, an expertise
which at this stage America lacks. That experience is represented
in the film by the ever excellent Michael Gambon as a Yale
professor, who is not what he appears to be and Billy Crudup,
camply English as a sort of Kim Philby figure. Then after
the war Wilson is invited to join the CIA, newly created
to deal with Cold War situation.
A potentially interesting story historically, the film has
a lot of ground to cover, but its attempt to bring it to
life through Wilson's eyes meets with limited success. Damon
has proved himself a first-class actor in other movies, but
while he holds the whole thing together well, the role itself
is all a bit one note. He spends virtually the whole film
looking stern. His personal story does occasionally come
to life however, particularly in scenes with Jolie in an
unusual role for her as his neglected wife Clover, which
she plays rather well; with his son (Eddie Redmayne), who
follows him into the service; and in his relationship with
the German interpreter (Hanna Schiller), with whom he has
an affair in post war Berlin. In fact, one of the main messages
of the film seems to be that working for the CIA ruins your
personal relationships.
There are also some very good supporting
performances – William
Hurt as the head of the CIA; John Torturro as Wilson's blue
collar born right-hand man, who does most of his dirty work;
John Sessions as a Russian defector who may or may not be
a double agent and De Niro as the ageing, mobility challenged
Sullivan. It's also very well filmed and effectively recreates
the various periods through which it moves. It is at times
a bit of a ponderous plod through history, lacking the energy
and focus of classic spy dramas like The Spy Who Came in
From the Cold, while in its ambition for historical and political
perspective it's morally ambiguous and indecisive in its
stance, being both patriotic yet at the same time admitting
that the CIA is not always well behaved. Rather as he did
with Munich, screenwriter Eric Roth seems to have done a
lot of thorough research and is eager to get it all in, with
the result that often the information is leading the characters
rather than the characters leading the story. The film would
have benefited from a tighter, more focused screenplay with
a more consistently engaging narrative, and the occasional
touch of humour would have lifted it. It’s very heavy
and even in pace and mood, too long for what it has to say.
But if you’re patient, there are plenty of good things
in this film to enjoy.
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