The Good Shepherd [2007] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

Product Details

Actor : Alec Baldwin, Matt Damon, Robert De Niro, Keir Dullea, Michael Gambon
Format : AC-3, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Extra tracks, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Aspect Ratio : 2.40:1
Binding : DVD
EAN : 0025192867125
Product Group : DVD
Region Code : 1
Release Date : 2007-04-03
Running Time : 168minutes
Studio : Universal Studios
UPC : 025192867125

ASIN : B000MXPE7O

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Customer Reviews

The Good Shepherd (2007-06-25)

Some reviewers have complained of lack of action and a dull main character; of a man with no obvious feelings, dedicated only to secrecy in the service of `The Company'. If you want gung-ho, bullet dodging heroes, then Tom Clancy and Harrison Ford are the guys for you. If you want to know where the men who are now running the USA (and hence the world) originated, and how they took a stranglehold on power, then watch this film. It is an intelligent account of the early days of the CIA: an extension of a rich old boy's network that may have begun with honourable intentions, but soon became a cabal, protecting vested interests, and now views its purpose solely to nurture the interests of one percent of one country's citizens, at the expense of just about everyone else on the planet. If that takes grey, violent men, obsessively secretive to the point of destroying their own families, then that's a price they willingly pay.The film succeeds admirably. De Niro maintains intelligence (pun intended) throughout, without pandering to target audiences or oversimplifying in case `they' won't understand it. Two or three viewings may be necessary to absorb everything here. Like Emilio Estevez's Bobby, I think this is a `where it all started to go wrong' film, inviting comparisons with today. As a Russian defector, at the end of his tether under torture says: `Soviet power is a myth. A great show. But there are no spare parts. Nothing is working. It's nothing but painted rust. But you. You need to keep the Russian myth alive to maintain your military-industrial complex. Your system depends on Russia being perceived as a threat. It is not a threat. It was never a threat. It never will be a threat. It is a rotten, bloated cow.' Even at two hours and forty minutes, I didn't want the film to end. The action, or conflict is unrelenting. Thought provoking, clever, entertaining, well-acted and genuine. An oddity, in other words.

good (2007-04-30)

There is nothing wrong with this film. It is a good, intellegent film with an interesting plot. There is nothing wrong with a long film either except when it tries to incorporate the level of detail that you read in a book. There is too much emphasis on very minor details which uses up unnecessary film time and therefore can easily lose the audiences interest. Worth a watch but it could definitely do with a small bit of editing.

Moody and Suspenseful! (2007-04-24)

I found this film to be totally absorbing, and yet, I can see how it would not appeal to those who are looking for fast-paced adventure. The tone of the film is intense, moody, and thought-provoking. The main character, played convincingly by an understated Matt Damon, is very loosely based upon James Jesus Angleton, a Yale poet, who studied counter-espionage with Kim Philby in London during World War II, and who presided over counter-espionage in the CIA during its infancy. One of the themes that the film explores is the toll taken by espionage on the life of the effective agent who must compartmentalize himself in respect to the conflicting and incompatible demands made by his secret work and his family. Utter detachment is the key to survival, and Matt Damon plays the spy's abdication from all emotion to perfection. The cinematography is stunning, the music is riveting, and the actors are excellent. It is not always easy, however, to follow the story, and it took several viewings for me to piece the complex events together. In fact, the half-dozen deleted scenes, provided on the DVD, help immensely. In my opinion, the sequences with Damon's brother-in-law, who has spent time in a Soviet labor camp and may or may not be a brain-washed penetration agent, should never have been cut, since they explain a lot about the main character's family dynamic. Even though the film is long and complex, however, my interest never flagged. Since the scenes shift back and forth (the subtitles, however, explain the location and time-frame adequately), some important plot points have been lost. For instance, we see the son asking his father to be taken into the CIA, but we are not told whether he has actually joined. Was it after his initiation into the Agency that he fell into the Soviet honey-trap? How did he get to the Congo in the first place? Did Damon's character actually suspect or recognize the true identity of the victim in the blackmail film? And is it he or his Soviet counterpart who is responsible for the outcome? These questions are never adequately addressed. Since the story is highly fictionalized, I am not certain why the directors introduced the young Cambridge SIS liason officer, who articulates clearly in London of the Blitz, but who develops a pronounced stammer in 1950-something Washington shortly before he defects to Moscow. Is he supposed to be a composite of Burgess, Maclean, and Philby (who stammered but did not defect until 1963)? That sub-plot is never developed. And why give the Soviet defector-mole in Washington the name of an historical KGB officer, Yuri Modin (who who was neither in Washington nor ever defected). Even though the real Modin was posing as a Soviet cypher clerk in the London Soviet Embassy and was actually running Burgess and Blunt, he never pretended to be anyone other than Yuri Modin. I found this detail to be jarring, since all the other characters have been given fictional names. Why not merely call the character Ivan Ivanovich? Seems a bit rough on Modin! These are mere quibbles, though, in a story that I found, on the whole, fascinating. P.S. After watching this film for a fourth time and paying close attention to the chronology, I was able to discover the answers to at least some the questions that I posed above. I also believe that I have figured out the relationship of the title, "The Good Shepherd," to the Yale "Whiffenpoof Song" that the Bonesmen sing several times in the film: 'We're poor little lambs who have lost our way . . .; We're little black sheep who have gone astray. . ." The lyrics to this song also give us another clue to a theme of the movie (as well as an allusion to another famous film): ". . .doomed from here to Eternity. Lord, have mercy on such as we. . ."

Hollow (2007-04-19)

Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) is a somber, quiet man. Every morning he leaves his middle class home in the suburbs and along with his neighbors boards a bus for downtown D.C. But unlike his neighbors, who presumably work as office functionaries, Wilson is a top, experienced, "higher-up" for the C.I.A. and though, on the surface dressed exactly like his neighbors in felt fedora and Sears trench coats, Wilson is headed for the monolith that is the C.I.A. headquarters. As written by Eric Roth and directed by Robert De Niro (De Niro's only other directing job was "A Bronx Tale"), "The Good Shepherd" traces the genesis of the C.I.A. as it evolves from the World War II O.S.S. and central to this terrific, fascinating, intelligently written and passionately directed movie is the story of Wilson himself and the ultimate tragedy of his life: a life that begins to unravel the moment he agrees to become a spy right out of college. Wilson, as portrayed by Matt Damon is the perfect spy if there is such a thing: he is without humor, looks like a thousand other men, dresses like a small town banker and is passionate about only two things: his son and his miniature ship in a bottle hobby. And anytime he strays from these two things, as in women or [...], he fails miserably. The world of Espionage is a dirty business, one that defies and twists the basic notions of truth, loyalty and pride. For Wilson there is almost no room for anything else: upon marrying he leaves his pregnant girlfriend, Clover(Angelina Jolie) for six years to serve in Europe without thinking about it twice. His life is his work and his work ultimately ruins his life by chipping away at the basic goodness and humanity that infuses his core self. By the end of this film, he is used up...hollow. "The Good Shepherd" moves back and forward in time from Wilson's initiation into the Skulls and Bones at Yale through the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961 and though the running time is approximately three hours, you are never bored for on the one hand, De Niro keeps things moving quickly and on the other the subject matter is rife with conflict, mystery and operates on the very highest level of commitment and interest.

The Good Shepherd - guaranteed to get you counting sheep... (2007-04-13)

This is a film that demands a lot of its audience, in the effort to stay awake during it or to resist the temptation to walk out of the auditorium. On paper it should be amazing - De Niro, Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Joe Pesci. But in reality, the film is about Matt Damon's character almost entirely with the other actors scarcely featuring. Damon's character is a remarkable chap - being in the CIA clearly means you are not prone to the ageing process like the rest of humankind - this film spans his character's career from a 20 year old high-flying student at Yale to mid mid-50s as a senior CIA agent, but throughout, he still looks like an early-30s Matt Damon. No attempt appears to have been made to age him, which makes it a bit more tricky to follow the film, given it chops around so much between various points in history. The story itself is tedious, its essentially follows Damon being selected to be one of the early members of the CIA and how his career evolves. A few things happen here and there along his career, there are some ups and downs, as you'd expect. Domestic life is strained occassionally, and he has to make a few tricky decisions. It just plods along and you keep wondering "how much longer before it ends?" or "is anything exciting actually going to happen". In the last 30 minutes of this 3 hour film, something happens, but it would be lucky to register any change on a heart-rate monitor. By this stage you just don't care about these grey characters, you just want to go home. I love film and I'm not normally this dismissive of a movie, but this film struck me as overly ponderous, long and choppy in its story-telling, with too many "code words" used to make it deliberately more difficult to follow. I think this is one for die-hard "history of espionage" fans only.

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