The Good Shepherd | 
 enlarge | Actors: Alec Baldwin, Matt Damon, Robert De Niro, Keir Dullea, Michael Gambon
Studio: Universal Studios
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
Buy New: $5.99
You Save: $8.99 (60%)
New (22) Used (2) from $5.99
Rating:  257 reviews
Sales Rank: 60496
Format: Ac-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language), German (Original Language), Russian (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language), French (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 168
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 61105240
UPC: 025195043953
EAN: 0025195043953
ASIN: B0017R1ECI
Theatrical Release Date: December 22, 2006
Release Date: June 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: SHRINK WRAPPED, NEVER OPENED, JUST A SMALL TEAR IN SHRINK WRAP, NO MOVIE TICKET, V -LOW PRICE, FIRST CLASS SHIP
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
A complicated movie about the Central Intelligence Agency and its agents, The Good Shepherd isn't your typical spy movie. Though it stars Matt Damon (The Bourne Identity films) and Angelina Jolie (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Lara Croft franchise)--actors with considerable experience in the action-espionage genre--The Good Shepherd requires that they play more subdued and (much less interesting) characters here. The movie focuses on the career or Edward Wilson (Damon), a privileged Yale graduate who goes on to help found the CIA. He is a quiet, serious, and guarded man, even in the most intimate moments with his civilian wife (Jolie, in a role that wastes her talent). Set against a backdrop of real-life events such as the Bay of Pigs, The Good Shepherd is meticulous in creating a realistic timeframe. The film gets a jolt of excitement when Robert DeNiro (in his first directing role since 1993's A Bronx Tale) peppers the screen with appearances by Joe Pesci, Alec Baldwin, and William Hurt. But those moments are too infrequent. At 157 minutes long, the film is crammed with many factual details, but the characters are shortchanged when it comes to development. Viewers have to wonder why anyone, much less someone like Wilson who has everything going for him, would devote his life to a thankless job that brings so little happiness to himself and his family. The Good Shepherd is an ambitious but flawed film. The actors do a formidable job with a well-intentioned but meandering script. However, we meet so many characters and learn so little about each that it's difficult to drum up much empathy for any of them. --Jae-Ha Kim
Description
Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie and Robert De Niro star in this powerful thriller about the birth of the CIA. Edward Wilson (Damon) believes in America, and will sacrifice everything he loves to protect it. But as one of the covert founders of the CIA, Edward's youthful idealism is slowly eroded by his growing suspicion of the people around him. Everybody has secrets…but will Edward's destroy him? With an all-star cast including Alec Baldwin, Billy Crudup, William Hurt, Timothy Hutton and John Turturro, it's the gripping story David Ansen of Newsweek hails as "spellbinding."
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| Customer Reviews: Read 252 more reviews...
 Yawn... is it over yet? July 26, 2008
This is a very boring movie. Endless dialogue that leads to nowhere. The character development is poor. The plot is confusing and unrealistic. This is painful to watch... 2 hours and 48 minutes of agony on a screen.
 Brilliant Movie July 18, 2008
The more I view this movie, the more I see how brilliant it is and how magnificant the subdued acting truly is.
Of course this movie didn't do well at the box office, especially in the culture we live in, where happy endings are no less demanded as well as expected, and where blatant action and spoon fed scripts are lauded.
Kudos to everyone who was part of this film: An understated masterpiece.
For Sophisticated Tastes June 30, 2008
This film will find a passionate audience among those looking for an intellectual, adult and intense experience.
 I spy with my little eye - something beginning with `d' - for dull. June 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
De Niro makes a surprising move here into spy territory - not modern Bourne type stuff (despite the presence of Matt Damon) but more like an American John Le Carre type story, in its understated events and emphasis on character. It's a noble endeavor, at times wonderfully shot - however, it is ultimately too flawed to succeed as entertainment.
The story revolves around the creation of the CIA, seen through the eyes of Edward Wilson (a composite of several real life characters). It plays as a character driven story showing what can make a man choose a life of permanent paranoia and secrecy, and the impact that has on his life. In this way the atmosphere around the time of the new Agency's genesis is portrayed rather than a strict blow by blow account of how it came to be. A superb and committed cast have been gathered, (including a blink and you'll miss it cameo from Joe Pesci), and there is a clear feeling of the proceedings oozing talent, from art direction and photography, through to actors and music.
However, there is something about the pacing that is not quite right - at 160 minutes, we should have some significant moments of drama to drive our interest on, but somehow we are left with a spy story of non-people and non-events... a spy movie without suspense. There's an interesting enough story arc for our main character, and the audience is asked to be intelligent enough to fill in some gaps - but the padding has turned what could have been an atmospheric and informative movie into something bloated and dull. This is no epic or definitive account.
Regular readers of mine will know I am no huge fan of rapid fire MTV style editing a la `Armageddon' and its ilk - but a movie still has to have some drive and entertainment value. That's missing here, despite the core having some very interesting things to say about the disease of loneliness and what it does to a man. Sad to say, no endorsement from me on this one, even though it has moments that really make me want to like it.
 Shepherd May 27, 2008
Interesting, if disquieting, view of the kind of organization apparently necessary to a nation to stay afloat in today's world: Situation ethics; disposable loyalties; diverse and highly sophisticated technological tools; unswerving but troubling idealisms; personal costs to participants in anguish and guilt; incremental compromises of original principles; patriotic ruthlessness.... Our eventual realization that both our friends and our enemies have similar organizations, for similar reasons, creates in us, the viewers, a more-in-sadness-than-in-anger awareness that parallel organizations have probably always existed and, of necessity, probably always will. The film's dialogue is often muffled, oblique, and hard to understand---in keeping with its atmosphere of secrecy---but the viewer thereby tends to lose the detail thread of what's going on at the moment. A film to watch several times, but not one where the viewer ends up envying the participants' lives.
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