The Good Shepherd ***

Spies In Their Eyes...

Director: Robert de Niro

Writer: Eric Roth

Starring: Matt Damon, Billy Crudup, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin

It was such a great idea. A taut thriller about the beginning of the CIA with an all-star cast of serious thespians and the ultimate Serious Thespian himself directing it. How, then, did we end up with this?? A flabby, meandering drama where an all-star cast somehow manages to mistake boring for nuanced, with poor direction and no editing process to speak of?

The story centres around Damon's overworked spy Edward Wilson - based on the founder of the CIA's counter-intelligence operations, James Angleton - who is recruited into the CIA after university through his connections with the Skull and Bones society. Married to Clover (a perpetually thirty-five-year-old Angelina Jolie, doing what she can with a thinly-written role), who he rather carelessly managed to get pregnant while dating the love of his life (?) he is sent off to wartime Britain, where he meets his British equivalent (a simpering Billy Crudup). At this point of the movie, things are looking quite good - shots of Skull and Bones initiation ceremonies and lamplit, rain-drenched London streets fit in nicely with our preconceived ideas, and the web of intrigue is growing. But two hours later, fifteen years have passed, Clover is still thirty-five (although fraying a little at the edges), things with Russia have gone from tense to full-blown cold war, and Robert de Niro has limped through a few minutes of screen time as the CIA boss. Somehow none of the central characters seem to age, except for Wilson's son, who goes from seven to seventeen in the space of about ten minutes. Somehow America is the centre of the world (and anyone who doesn't agree is either a sadistic Russian or a pathetic Brit). And we're still no closer to understanding how the preposterous framing device fits in with the central storyline. By the time this is revealed, you are well past caring.

This film doesn't so much wear its allegiances on its sleeve as take it out, wrap it in wood, and batter you over the head with it. After more than three hours of colourless characters (ironically, it may be the most accurate spy movie ever made in this respect - spies have to blend in) and God-Bless-America propaganda. It gets a star for Tammy Blanchard's screen-lighting performance as a deaf girl and a star for its worthiness, and a star for the scenes in postwar London, all rainy noir and moody nights.

CONCLUSION: Overlong, overcooked and overblown, a decent set-up is ruined by the meandering storyline and a refusal to visit the cutting room. Maybe some great actors were just not meant to direct.