Review of The Good Shepherd (2006) by Hotelcentral — 18 Feb 2020

The biography of a spy does not necessarily a spy movie make.

The Good Shepherd is interminable. Edward Wilson, as portrayed here in word and deed, has no personality. Sitting through two hours and forty-seven minutes with a character even less expressive than Mr. Spock, and with none of Spock's charm, becomes an exercise in torment. It is like waiting for the Sphinx to smirk. I found myself checking the elapsed time every five minutes. Can I tolerate five minutes more? Somehow I saw it through to the end. A hollow victory, but a victory mine.

I'm in no position to judge whether Matt Damon succeeds or fails. Angelina Jolie, to my mind, doesn't actually look like someone who might have been alive during the 1940s. The rest of the cast could have been anyone. They come, they go, they say things. I suppose the one thing I can admire is that violence is not glamorized. It's shown as dirty. A man is beaten to death and dumped in a river. A woman is thrown from an airplane. There's nothing about either of these killings that hints of the action-adventure flick.

I give the film a 6 because it doesn't take the easy route. There are no fiery explosions. I can't actually remember if anyone is shot. But I can't find it in me to rate this film a 7 because watching it through to the end is a kind of torture that is incompatible with entertainment.