Review of The Good Shepherd (2006) by Nicke — 07 May 2007

This was a poor film and not worth the time and effort of following it (and before anyone says anything about my taste in films, my 2 favorites in the past year have been "Zodiac" and "Inland Empire").

It is beautifully shot, but it has no discernable plot; though it's oriented around a what-if concerning a CIA leak and the Bay of Pigs, most of the 3 hours is spent in tangents away from this storyline, to the point that you forget about it until you're reminded again.

These tangents (the old college flame, is the defector who he says he is, Pesci's character) are presented as subplots, but they're all so abbreviated that none of them goes anywhere. A film like this can work if the characters are compelling; however, other than Damon, everyone in the film is on-screen so briefly that they feel like stick figures rather than human beings.

And Damon, whom I usually like, plays his role with such emotional restraint that it's not clear that the events of the film have any effect on him. Insofar as the movie lacks a clear plot and fleshed-out characters, and that it asks you to identify with a protagonist who's both unlikable and improbably inhuman, it just doesn't work.