2/4  DeNiro, you can do better.
This is the kind of sluggish, overlong film in which the patient viewer keeps waiting to no avail for something to happen, and the impatient viewer will simply fall asleep or run away screaming; a dynamic cast can't salvage this surface t... (read full)

1/4  The Good Snore
Dear Robert DeNiro,

you are a great actor. So is Joe Pesci. This film is not without merit. however, stick to acting. If you direct a film in the future I may be forced to avoid it. Matt & Angie really didn't look that young in the beg... (read full)

3/4  Different kind of spy movie
The CIA has all the answers to everything except how to be human. In the height of the Cold War, the CIA is formed to save the American way of life from the communists. One man, Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) sacrifices everything for his love... (read full)

2.5/4  The Good Shepherd Quick Review
I expected a little bit more since this is a De Niro movie. But, it still had a chilling scene, and a surprise ending.

0.5/4  The Good Shepherd Quick Review
Slow. Boring. Terrible movie. Skip It.

2.5/4  The Good Shepherd Quick Review
The start of the CIA and all the cloak and dagger spy moves is interesting, but it moves at such a glacial pace in this film it takes all the fun out of it. I know the CIA is full of emotionless robots, but they really outdid themselves.

2/4  The Good Shepherd Quick Review
sooooo long and boring, and confusing, have to watch it again to see what i missed. something i wont do again

0.5/4  The Good Shepherd Quick Review
A really, really long boring movie that I could not wait to get out of at the theater.

3/4  The Good Shepherd Quick Review
A good movie in the end. It was interesting to see how the CIA began, but it stops there. If you have no interest in secrets or spies you will be bored to death, just as my wife was. Also, Damon is very wooden.

4/5 The Game of Games
  by Billy Bardo (Omphalos, USA)
I had not read any critical reviews of the film before I saw it, and had no expectations going in. I actually began watching it in the background, while surfing the web, and after a few minutes had to stop what I was doing and focus on the film, having been utterly drawn in. Even though it was quite late, and against my better judgment, I was unable to stop until I reached the end of this very long, and very engaging meditation on the origins of the American CIA, and the problems inherent in both it's mission, it's domain, and it's architecture.

The problems of mission and architecture are nothing new to the history of intelligence. But intelligence is a game that Americans have really only been playing since WWII, unlike the English and the French. In fact, we learned the game from the British as the O.S.S., and the structure of the CIA was largely influenced through British guidance. The film does a good job of exploring the problematic nature of espionage, when seen from the catbird seat. It is a process of continually sifting through information in an attempt to correctly identify authentic, true information from misinformation and disinformation. In this process, your closest associates may be attempting to mislead and deceive you. Your most powerful adversaries may be attempting to enlighten you. Why would they do that? What are they really up to, one and all? And what is your best option to use misinformation to misdirect them, to pull the wool over their eyes, or to move them to embrace one alternative course of action over another? And this is an ongoing dynamic, continuously changing, requiring constant recalibration. This is an environment that breeds creatures uniquely adapted to survival within it--that they become something much different than the rest of us ordinary slobs, part machine, part monster, part logician, part artist, is beside the point--they end up standing behind the great and the powerful, whispering the words in their ear that set armies marching--or not--as the case may be.

If I were to render any criticism at all of this well conceived and executed film, it would be this: in order to cut the topology of the game wide open and expose it in all of it's truly wicked problematic nature, they had to build their colossus on a foot of clay. A wanton socialite seduces an inscrutable and intellectual young man who doesn't care for her and becomes pregnant. This one seminal event grows into the engine that drives the entire story forward. It isn't far-fetched, it doesn't require a great leap of faith to accept, in many ways it is necessary in order to show the depth of the problem domain--but it is an awful coincidence. In a world of carrots and sticks and people who want to motivate you to cooperate with them, each person requires a different set of carrots and sticks. Is there ANYTHING at all which can be used to force Edward Wilson to compromise himself and his loyalty and trustworthiness? De Niro seems to want us to ask: could I do this? Would I do this? Here is a man who some would argue has been put to the ultimate test, and passed--what kind of a man is he? And what if he were different than that? Would he be a Good Shepherd to us, one and all? And where does that leave the sheep? At the mercy of the Shepherd, for good or for bad. Does that let you rest easy at night?

4/5 More Character Study than Action Movie
  by catsandbooks (NM)
Yale graduate (and Skull and Bones member)Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) is recruited out of college as a spy and eventually becomes one of the founding agents of the CIA. In love with a deaf woman but forced to marry another (Angelina Jolie) because he got her pregnant, Wilson spends most of his time overseas and away from family. The movie covers Wilson's career, moving through historical events such as the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam War. But the emphasis is placed on characterization more than anything else. Wilson is a guarded, reserved man who rarely shows emotion. Jolie is a funloving young woman who becomes embittered over their estranged marital state. His son (the only person Wilson shows any sort of emotion with) yearns for his father's approval. Some pretty impressive actors make their appearance: Alec Baldwin, Robert DeNiro, William Hurt, and Joe Pesci, to name a few. Although the movie is well over two hours, it's a fascinating look at the life of a secret agent and the effects it has on his family and friends.

4/5 Russians ahead of the C.I.A, in spycraft
  by R. Bagula (Lakeside, Ca United States)
This movie gives the history of the C.I.A. from the WWII O.S.S.
through the 60's.
The US was betrayed by the British who had important Soviet moles.
The US couldn't do anything well or secret in the 50's and 60's
but the power of the secret agencies still grew.
Here we follow the life of a fictional counter-intelligence
operative/ executive through the post war and the Cuban Bay of Pigs failure.
His life isn't an ideal one and he learns from his teachers and experience to
trust no one. The American Empire comes off as a trained by the British
organization?


3/5 Problematic attempt at a serious spy film
  by Joseph P. Menta, Jr. (Philadelphia, PA USA)
Beautifully lit and shot (the movie looks like "The Godfather, Part II"), "The Good Shepherd" is nevertheless long, mostly dull, and muddled in its message. Is the film saying that Matt Damon's character honored his beliefs and ideals during his CIA career, compromised them, or a combination of both? It just wasn't clear how he felt about things, or even (equally unhelpful) how complicit he was in certain activities. And while I don't begrudge Angelina Jolie playing the occasional unglamorous role, her shrill wife character seemed a waste of her talents. "The Good Shepherd" gets a few points for looking good, a handful of tense scenes, and some good supporting performances (including one by director Robert De Niro), but overall it was a disappointment. The DVD looks and sounds great, and features a selection of deleted scenes (revealing an entire excised subplot about the Angelina Jolie character's brother) as its sole special feature.

2/5 Out of sedatives, watch The Good Shepherd.
  by
I respect Robert De Niro and Matt Damon, but have they conceived what ingredients should be incorporated into a movie to make it the least bit watchable? By min. 20 I thought I was at least 90 min. into the movie. The only words in my diction I care to employ to describe this movie are tedious, sleep-inducing, ineffective, irritating, and interminably long. Hopefully De Niro and Damon will make more approachable movies from now on.