The Good Shepherd

Robert De Niro – 2006 – USA

The Good Shepherd is a film I admire the more I see it.  It’s easy to be underwhelmed by it, due both to its ambitious scope and its sedate tone.  It seems to have ambitions of being a Godfather of espionage films, and in many ways it comes about as close as one can hope, and yet it is also very much doing its own thing.  While it can be argued that organized crime is glamorized in some of Coppola’s and Scorsese’s most beloved films, (most of which starred De Niro, ironically), here De Niro as director leaves absolutely nothing to lust over in the world of covert government intelligence.  He portrays it as a bleak wasteland where all roads can only lead to corruption, paranoia and utter impotence.  On first viewing, I resented the casting of flavor-of-the-month A-listers Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie, but over time I saw them as effectively cast to type; the former being the quintessential, bland all-American go-getter, and the latter being the too-good-to-be-true dark beauty who proves to have little of substance beneath a polished veneer.  Damon’s character, Edward Wilson – recruited into the OSS and then the CIA via the Skull & Bones fraternity at Yale – starts out with some idea of ethics, but his penchant for secrecy quickly twists his worldview into a moral vacuum in which preserving his job and reputation becomes the sole bottom-line priority, at the expense of human lives, major foreign policy decisions, and even his own family.  Though historically accurate, the plot and characters are all fictionalized, which for dramatic effect I find sound.  Wilson is a composite of CIA luminaries Richard Bissell and James Jesus Angleton and is portrayed directly involved in most of the major counterintelligence events from the 1940s through the early 60s; including the installation of friendly dictatorships in Italy and Guatemala, the recruitment of a key Soviet double-agent, cutting deals with the mafia for aid against Castro, and finally the bungled Bay of Pigs invasion.  The film has no ideological agenda; the CIA evolved unhindered through Democratic and Republican administrations.  Despite being fictional, it presents a view of the American intelligence community that is quite truthful and painful to accept; essentially arguing that the Cold War was a fruitless exercise in futility and that the façade of American moral superiority is only maintained through the most soul-sucking lies and hypocrisy.