Grade: B+
Anyone who savors John le Carre’s moody Cold War thrillers featuring George Smiley (and the British mini-series with Alec Guinness based on them) should appreciate Eric Roth and Robert De Niro’s atmospheric, finely proportioned American equivalent. “The Good Shepherd” is basically an imaginative construction of the beginnings of the CIA, centering on the career of Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), a preternaturally undemonstrative, obsessive fellow who enters the OSS during World War II after graduating Yale as a Skulls & Bones initiate and then serves from the beginning of the CIA as its head of counter-intelligence. The character is loosely based on James Jesus Angleton, the notorious, almost mythically strange fellow who actually held that post and came to be known for his deep suspicion that the Soviets had placed a high-placed mole within the agency and his efforts to unmask him. It was suggested by some that he himself was the mole, acting the part of rabid investigator to conceal the fact.
Some details of Angleton’s career and speculations about him have been folded into Roth’s narrative about Wilson, but it would be a mistake to see the character as biographical–or the overall picture drawn of the CIA’s beginnings at accurate in any historical sense. This is fiction that cannily mimics the actual record in some respects, a melding of the real, the plausible and the invented that can be taken as a creative reflection on the nation’s early spy business; but it ought not to be accepted as a documentary retelling.
“The Good Shepherd” oscillates between 1961, when the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion raises suspicion that someone high up within the CIA betrayed the plan to the Russians, and events beginning in the late thirties, when Wilson–a Yalie whose father (Timothy Hutton, solid) had died in an apparent gun accident many years before–was recruited by FBI man Sam Murach (Alec Baldwin, playing the part with relish) to spy on his Nazi-sympathizing mentor Professor Fredericks (Michael Gambon, fussily fine). His success in this endeavor leads not only to his initiation into Skull & Bones but his marriage to Clover Russell (Angelina Jolie), a senator’s vivacious daughter whom he gets pregnant and agrees to wed, even though his real love is the deaf Laura (Terry Blanchard).
Almost immediately, however, the young husband is recruited into the intelligence service by Bill Sullivan (director De Niro, amusingly gruff as the fictionalized version of Bill Donovan) and sent to London to head the American office there. In wartime England he learns spycraft from a variety of British specialists, including smoothly ingratiating Arch Cummings (slick Billy Crudup). And upon his post-war return Sullivan offers him the head counter-intelligence post at the newly-formed CIA.
From this point Wilson’s professional and personal difficulties increase. At home his relationship with Clover is cool, but they stay together for their son Edward Jr. (Eddie Redmayne) until he briefly reconnects with Laura and someone takes the opportunity to poison the marriage by informing his wife. At the office he comes to depend on a Soviet defector named Mironov (John Sessions), until a second man claiming to be Mironov shows up, whose truthfulness the agency decides to test with LSD. (The double-defector thread and LSD connection are actually drawn from history.) The twisted business points to the hand of crafty KGB chief Stas Siyanko, code-named Ulysses (Oleg Stefan)–this story’s fill-in for le Carre’s Karla–whom Wilson had met in post-war Europe and who had christened the silent, unemotional American “Mother.” Another office problem arises from the fact that Edward Jr. decides to join the agency. And that’s not all. Another plot thread references the Kim Philby scandal. Yet another, the effort to unseat a leftist South American president, perhaps with the help of a gangster (Joe Pesci). And throughout the film there are recurrent allusions to the efforts of a scientific team to unravel the secrets of a mysterious film sent anonymously to Wilson.
There are further characters, too–agency head Philip Allen (William Hurt), for example. And Edward’s loyal right hand Ray Brocco (John Turturro). And Richard Hayes (Lee Pace), an old college acquaintance–and CIA colleague–of Wilson’s.
It should be obvious by now that “The Good Shepherd” is both convoluted and episodic, with feints and double-crosses galore and an overarching theme of betrayal according to which no one can ultimately be trusted. But despite the complexity, it isn’t particularly difficult to follow if one remains reasonably attentive. That’s because the pacing is deliberate, the tone set by the dour, unflappable character of Wilson himself, played in minimalist fashion by an impressively controlled but intense Damon. And the action is, to say the least, muted. There are no roof-top chases or sudden explosions or acrobatic fist-fights here; in terms of Damon’s cinematic espionage work, this might be described as the anti-Bourne. Even the deaths that occur in the course of the narrative are staged in a subdued, detached fashion. De Niro consistently opts for atmosphere over excitement. Some will find the result slow, meandering, even tedious, but for others it will prove a solemn but compulsively fascinating puzzle.
Certainly De Niro has assembled a fine cast to realize his vision. Damon is excellent, and Jolie surprisingly good as his long-suffering spouse. And everyone else in the large cast contributes sharp turns, with Baldwin, Gambon, Hurt, Turturro and Sessions registering especially strongly. (If there’s a weak link, it’s Redmayne’s callow young junior, but it’s not entirely his fault: the character’s importance to the story is the least effective aspect of the plotting.) The crew’s work is equally expert, from Jeannine Oppewall’s production design, Robert Guerra’s art direction and Ann Roth’s costumes, which together capture the period flavor the story requires, to Robert Richardson’s elegant cinematography and an agreeably evocative score by Marcelo Zarvos and Bruce Fowler.
“The Good Shepherd” will turn off some viewers because of its somber tone and deliberate pace. A few may also object to its highly critical view of the CIA as a trustworthy guardian of the nation’s interests. But those attuned to its wavelength will thrive on its mixture of opacity and moodiness. It’s the sort of le Carre that even le Carre doesn’t write anymore, but without the British accent. If that appeals to you, don’t hesitate.