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Movies / On DVD / The Good Shepherd
The Good Shepherd

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The Good Shepherd (2006)

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Reviews Counted:161

Fresh:90

Rotten:71

Average Rating:6.1/10

Consensus: This fictitious CIA origin film is an overlong, tedious effort that leaves viewers with more questions than answers.

Rated: 15 [See Full Rating] for some violence, sexuality and language

Runtime: 2 hrs 48 mins

Genre: Dramas

Theatrical Release:23-02-2007

Synopsis: With THE GOOD SHEPHERD, Robert De Niro (A BRONX TALE) makes an ambitious return to the director's chair. A labor of love for Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (FORREST GUMP), the film tells an... With THE GOOD SHEPHERD, Robert De Niro (A BRONX TALE) makes an ambitious return to the director's chair. A labor of love for Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (FORREST GUMP), the film tells an epic, fictionalized account of how the Central Intelligence Agency was born. Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, a reserved young man who graduated from Yale in the late 1930s. His membership in the exclusive, hidden Skull and Bones society led him away from poetry and into a relationship with the federal government, who recruited him to help them on several covert operations. Roth's script alternates between Wilson's gradual emergence as a genuine government operative in the early 1940s and the infamous Bay of Pigs conflict in the early 1960s. Along the way, he has a sweet romance with a pretty deaf girl (a sparkling Tammy Blanchard) and ends up marrying the woman he impregnates (Angelina Jolie) out of a strong sense of duty. Throughout the film, the emergence of a mysterious tape haunts Wilson, who is determined to uncover the truth behind a leak in his secret organization. Production designer Jeannine Claudia Oppewall (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN) and costume designer Ann Roth (THE ENGLISH PATIENT, THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY) faithfully recreate these earlier periods in American history, while the imagery of Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson (J.F.K., THE AVIATOR) casts a warm, stately glow upon De Niro's assembled cast of luminaries (including Alec Baldwin, Michael Gambon, William Hurt, Billy Crudup, and Joe Pesci). The result is a production that recalls Francis Ford Coppola's THE CONVERSATION and Steven Spielberg's MUNICH. [More]

Starring: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Joe Pesci, John Turturro

Starring: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Joe Pesci, John Turturro, Keir Dullea, Alec Baldwin, Michael Gambon, Billy Crudup, William Hurt, Liya Kebede, Gabriel Macht, Jason Patric, Eddie Redmayne, Sándor Técsy

Director: Robert De Niro

Director: Robert De Niro
Producer: Jane Rosenthal
Studio: Universal Pictures

[See More Credits]

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Reviews for The Good Shepherd

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141 - 160 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
Text View | |< << 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 >> >|
Arrange By:Fresh | Rotten | Comments | Name | Source | Date
 
 

[Robert De Niro has] made one of the best pictures of the year.

Full Review Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution | comment Comment
12/21/06
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

As impenetrable as the [CIA] itself.

Full Review Source: Metromix.com | comment Comment
12/21/06
Matt Pais
Matt Pais
Metromix.com

If Robert De Niro had directed 'Casino Royale,' Bond wouldhave been suitable for Masterpiece Theater. And that's nota compliment.

Full Review Source: Compuserve | comment Comment
12/21/06
Harvey S. Karten
Harvey S. Karten
Compuserve

Daniel Craig rarely stopped flexing as the new James Bond; here Matt Damon hardly moves a muscle.

Full Review Source: Sun Publications (Chicago, IL) | comment Comment
12/21/06
Josh Larsen
Josh Larsen
Sun Publications (Chicago, IL)

Robert De Niro made up for lost time by making "The Good Shepherd," a film that feels like it takes 13 years to watch.That's an exaggeration. The sprawling, 160-minute epic only feels like it takes seven hours.

Full Review Source: Arizona Daily Star | comment 2 Comments
12/21/06
Phil Villarreal
Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star

It’s almost impossible to buy Wilson as a pioneer who helped shape one of the world’s most intricate and devious intelligence agencies, leaving us to wonder how the CIA could ever have gotten off the ground through the labors of such an utter stiff.

Full Review Source: L.A. Weekly | comment Comment
12/20/06
Ella Taylor
Ella Taylor
L.A. Weekly

Clocking in at nearly three hours, The Good Shepherd is a numbing history of the C.I.A. that leaves you Novocained.

Full Review Source: New York Observer | comment Comment
12/20/06
Rex Reed
Rex Reed
New York Observer

The sort of le Carre that even le Carre doesn't write anymore, but without the British accent...a solemn but compulsively fascinating puzzle.

Full Review Source: One Guy's Opinion | comment Comment
12/20/06
Frank Swietek
Frank Swietek
One Guy's Opinion

The type of movie that would probably improve with repeat viewings, but God only knows who could sit through this experience twice.

Full Review Source: ComingSoon.net | comment Comment
12/20/06
Edward Douglas
Edward Douglas
ComingSoon.net

The problem is that De Niro nails a particularly emotionless, chilly, paranoid tone -- and then stubbornly refuses to modulate it for damn near three hours.

Full Review Source: Philadelphia Weekly | comment Comment
12/20/06
Sean Burns
Sean Burns
Philadelphia Weekly

It's the story of the season: Trim about a half-hour and you could turn a good movie into a great one.

Full Review Source: Associated Press | comment Comment
12/19/06
Christy Lemire
Christy Lemire
Associated Press

As long as it is, Shepherd speeds through its leading man's life, cramming in 30 years without elaborating on any of them.

Full Review Source: Village Voice | comment Comment
12/19/06
Robert Wilonsky
Robert Wilonsky
Village Voice

A cinematic still-birth.

Full Review Source: Planet Sick-Boy | comment Comment
12/19/06
Jon Popick
Jon Popick
Planet Sick-Boy

The Good Shepherd is equally fascinating as a character drama and as a cold war thriller.

Full Review Source: ReelViews | comment Comment
12/18/06
James Berardinelli
James Berardinelli
ReelViews

One of the most impressive movies ever made about espionage.

Full Review Source: New Yorker | comment Comment
12/18/06
David Denby
David Denby
New Yorker

"The Good Shepherd" is all about tone and the stoic atmosphere of secrets and lies that protects U.S. government agents. It's about a milieu of insidious self-important people in positions of power who took advantage of their autonomy.

Full Review Source: ColeSmithey.com | comment Comment
12/18/06
Cole Smithey
Cole Smithey
ColeSmithey.com

Ostensibly the untold story of the birth of the C.I.A., Robert De Niro's film is really the most mundane psychological profile of the year.

Full Review Source: Slant Magazine | comment Comment
12/16/06
Ed Gonzalez
Ed Gonzalez
Slant Magazine

It's tough to slog through a movie that has no pulse.

Full Review Source: Rolling Stone | comment 6 Comments
12/15/06
Peter Travers
Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

Excessive running time (168 minutes) and deliberate pace are not the problem of De Niro's ambitious saga--it's the lack of a proper dramatic paradigm to illustrate vividly what often comes across as history lecture, though the facts are fascinating.

Full Review Source: EmanuelLevy.Com | comment Comment
12/15/06
Emanuel Levy
Emanuel Levy
EmanuelLevy.Com

A buttoned-up, shadowy dramatic recounting of the early days of the buttoned-up, shadowy Central Intelligence Agency.

Full Review Source: Entertainment Weekly | comment Comment
12/13/06
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly
 
 
141 - 160 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
Text View | |< << 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 >> >|
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