The Good Shepherd (2006)

The Worst Film Ever

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This is a staring contest. Someone asks Matt Damon's character and he stares off into space. Too many changes of dates and a very confused story line. This movie is about something but exactly what eludes me. The Whiffenpoofs are seen in some musical presentations but no good show of their talent is to be found here. The old cars look nice. Matt is supposed to age more than twenty years but that doesn't happen at all.This is not an entertaining film in my opinion. Lots of people here did like it. The one very good scene I recommend watching is the parachute scene near the end. How did they do that? My guess is the stunt is what cost the $90 million.

The tumultuous early history of the Central Intelligence Agency is viewed through the prism of one man's life. My biggest problem with The Good Shepherd is definitely the outrageous 167 minutes and the pacing was so slow and boring plus seeing Matt Damon dressed as a woman and singing gave me nightmares and even tho the cast is fantastic and talented such as Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, Billy Crudup, Robert De Niro and William Hurt are all of them fantastic actors but their characters were just very one note and pretty lame and it's a real shame and De Niro himself should probably start making great movies again instead of things like this. (5/10)

'What do you people have?''The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.' --Best dialog of the movie! I liked this film more than the average reviewer for the simple reason that, as a history buff, I was at least acquainted with a good deal of the lore of those times and the CIA (JFK & Bay of Pigs, post-war Germany, even CIA drug use for interrogation purposes). And this really is rather essential to a fuller enjoyment of the movie, as I suspect why there was a good deal of ambivalence for it from others. De Niro did a credible job directing, but it was obviously assumed that viewers would have more knowledge of those times than most people probably do, due to the fact that the film did have a tendency to skim over some of the events and minutiae that likely could have used further elucidation. Of course, at well over 2-hours in length, this would not have been practical.The cast was great... with one exception. Damon did a convincing job of playing a soulless bureaucrat, I'll take that any day. While, the one exception, was Angelina Jolie- who I feel was miscast in her role as Damon's estranged wife. She typically is miscast in anything outside of flash and dash type of flix. But that's a somewhat off-topic matter.

I tried staying with this movie for an hour or so but it was so disjointed and tedious I finally gave up on it. I agree with another reviewer that the cinematography is good, but that cannot make up for the fact that the movie jumps all over the place without warning, which adds to the confusion. (At one point we're involved in the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the next we're in 1939.)I suppose the writer and director knew exactly what they were doing, and perhaps all of the disjointed sections of the story were tied together neatly at the end. If so it would require some serious twine.IMO a new viewer will find it very difficult to follow the story. DeNiro is fine actor, perhaps he should have stuck with that.