Lack Of Love For Lambs

Newcastle Herald

Monday February 19, 2007

REVIEW JAMES JOYCE

THE GOOD SHEPHERD (M)

Director: Robert DeNiro

Stars: Mat Damon, Angelina Jolie, John Turturro, William Hurt

Screening: general release

*** 1/2

ROBERT DeNiro explores the formation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with a steely gaze and chilling intensity that could be the directorial equivalent of a DeNiro performance.

For only his second outing as a director, the acclaimed actor offers a fictionalised account of one man's rise through the ranks of the United States spy machine and the heavy toll his all-consuming profession has on his family.

Matt Damon (The Bourne Identity) plays Edward Wilson, a student at Yale who is recruited by the FBI to spy on one of his professors (Michael Gambon), a suspected Nazi sympathiser.

At the outbreak of World War II, Wilson is recruited into the Office Of Strategic Services and dispatched to war-torn London where he becomes a cold, calculating counter-intelligence agent trading secrets and lies for America and learning to trust no one.

At the end of the war, the Russians are the new enemy and so Wilson becomes a founding member of the new CIA, charged with untangling webs of political intrigue spun by the Soviets.

The film opens in Washington DC in 1961 as the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba goes pear-shaped. Wilson must find out what went wrong and his best clue is a photograph and an audio tape delivered anonymously to his door.

As his forensics team pinpoints, piece by painstaking piece, what the blurry image and fuzzy conversation mean, Wilson reflects on his life.

At 167 minutes, The Good Shepherd is long, slow and told in overlapping flashbacks that demand the viewer stay alert as the plot jumps back and forth from the 1930s to the 1960s and points in between.

There's lots of talking and little action.

Expect much shuffling of files marked top secret, characters peering through blinds, images of men in fedoras and long coats lurking in shadowy alleyways and music that conveys sinister foreboding.

While Damon doesn't age all that convincingly over the film's latter stages, he makes the perfect blank canvas for DeNiro's fascinating portrait of patriotism at any cost.

Looking like the all-American boy scout as straight as his centre parting, Damon's stone-faced stare doesn't arouse much sympathy until near the end, by which time his grown son has become tragically entangled in agency business.

The supporting cast, which incudes John Turturro, Alec Baldwin, William Hurt, Billy Crudup, Joe Pesci and DeNiro, is excellent. Less convincing is Angelina Jolie, cast against type as Wilson's neglected wife.

The Good Shepherd's sober attention to detail leaves little room for heart.

But it's a handsome, eloquent, intricately crafted history lesson compelling in the same way as George Clooney's Good Night and Good Luck.

***** masterpiece **** excellent *** very good **not bad * not good

BOMB stand clear

© 2007 Newcastle Herald

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