Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3938 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-09-24
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 160 minutes

Synopsis
With THE GOOD SHEPHERD, Robert De Niro (A BRONX TALE) makes an ambitious return to the director’s chair. A labour of love for Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (FORREST GUMP), the film tells an epic, fictionalised 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 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 makes pregnant (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 organisation. 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.

Customer Reviews

Interesting slice of CIA history
In summary, I enjoyed this film but not one of the best.
In fact, there may be many people who switch off half way through.

The film is a little slow in unravelling the story and definitely not the most action packed, very much a storytelling film.

The story is essentially about how the CIA saw its roots in the OSS during teh second world war and then formed as an official organisation post the second world war to protect US interests in the world.

It revolves around one key character, Matt Damon, who is acted very well although not that hard as he is not a man of many words.

What really struck me was the type of people that populate the CIA. Definitely not your normal every day family person !

Robert De Niro should be proud in adding this to his directorial roster.

If you like a good story (as opposed to an action packed fim) along the lines of Munich et al, then you should enjoy this.