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The Good Shepherd (Full Screen Edition) |  | Director: Robert De Niro
Actors: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Robert De Niro, Alec Baldwin, Tammy Blanchard
Studio: Universal Studios
Category: DVD
List Price: $9.99
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Seller: ZoverstocksUSA
Rating:  279 reviews
Sales Rank: 42229
Format: AC-3, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Extra tracks, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
Languages: English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), English (Original Language), German (Original Language), Russian (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Discs: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Running Time: 167 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.7 x 0.6
MPN: MCAD61028672D
UPC: 025192867224
EAN: 0025192867224
ASIN: B000MXPE7Y
Theatrical Release Date: December 22, 2006
Release Date: April 3, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product 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."
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
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 279
 Feeling a chill as as you look over your shoulder? June 13, 2010
K. Groves
I had the fortune and the wisdom to see this movie while it was still in theaters. Despite being long, it is chilling when you take account how casual and frighteningly brutal an organization the CIA became from what arguably could have been called humble beginnings. I admit I could be called less than objective because I love Matt Damon and would see just about ANY movie he comes out with these days. People want to call it disconnected but this is emblematic of the intelligence community. I found no fault in the story telling or the awesome cast that powered it. I found it creepy and was inclined to look around twice as I left the theater to make sure no-one was tailing me. It's the surgical, methodical cold blooded nature of Matt Damon's character that becomes a definitive trademark and one I can identify with as I aspire to it myself. If I had but ONE complaint, I would say that Angelina Jolie's role in this movie is woefully underdone but other than that, I found it excellent storytelling.
bureaucratic thriller May 31, 2010
Robert J. Crawford (Balmette Talloires, France)
This is one of those films about which people feel very strongly, positive or negative: it does not fit into an easy category (e.g. Bond-like action), has extraordinary nuance that speaks to very specific interests (bureaucratic power, the private life of spies, civilian control over dirty tricks, elite secret societies), and has wonderfully understated acting that hides what is going on underneath more than acts it out. If it isn't for everyone, I found it utterly fascinating and engaging all the way through.
The plot revolves around a group initiated into Yale's Skull & Bones club, the elite of the elite who gain connections that will benefit them for the rest of their lives after they are "chosen" and submit to bizarre rituals. In the mid-1930s, they were white, from privileged WASP families from the NE, and naively patriotic (e.g. George HW Bush). While fitting in, Damon's character has subtle problems: son of a suicide who was apparently corrupt and perhaps even a traitor, deeply troubled in his relationships, and deeply secretive to protect his innermost feelings. Taken into the OSS and married after an almost accidental sexual encounter, he grows into a master spy at the moment that his Skull & Bones "brothers" are founding the CIA. He becomes one of their early top officials.
The viewer enters into the spy's world view, not as dashing swashbucklers, but as the ultimate manipulators of events and opinions from bureaucratic perches in depressingly plain offices. Their mission is to protect American security, but their activities define their purview in a far wider way than merely military. Even the architect behind it (de Niro) has misgivings, which the younger "brothers" apparently do not. In many ways, they begin to be corrupted by their power, which they love yet are not overt about it. It is a wonderful study of how a professional bureaucracy evolves into ever new areas. The violence, which underpins everything they are managing, makes only a few brief appearances, which are frighteningly realistic, subdued yet sudden. Trusting no one, through Damon you see how it impacts their private lives.
The Damon character, who had great potential to grow in a very different direction, becomes completely consumed by his duty and subtle lust for power as he masses evidence on his own colleagues as well. His wife, a great beauty from a Skull & Bones family (Jolie in an unusually subtle role that matches her talents), suffers terribly from his mission-driven egotism, as does his son; they live with constant fear and dread. In a way, he self-destructs, but at the same time he is an extraordinary achiever and, in my view, a completely believable psychological profile: he was working to please an absent parent, was driven by his sense of class and purpose, and had extreme talent. But all of this is revealed in ways that must be interpreted, a layer below his gloomy, dutiful surface, which is great fun if you like to let characters like this enter your imagination.
The plot is also wonderfully complex, if somewhat confusing with all the skips in time. It is based around the failure of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. A seeming friend, his Soviet counterpart is seeking ways to undermine and co-opt him: his efforts are yet another way that complicates the Damon character's life, with terrible consequences that once again are not completely spelled out. Did he follow the route of his father? Somewhat less? Can you become partially corrupt? Or did he betray the last things he held dear for the sake of his career and integrity? There are no clear answers to these questions, but if the film has spoken to you, you formulate your own answers. This is filmmaking, in my view, at its absolute best.
Recommended as a masterpiece. All the details are as delicious as they are deliberate. The acting is first rate, understated, and rich in ambiguity.
Lets keep this short and simple. May 29, 2010
R. Robinson (N.C. by way of TX)
Pretty accurate account of the first years of the CIA. Intelligence work is tedious and encourages people who are idealist and perfectionists. It tends (at least used to) draw those who place job above all else, especially given the nature of the work, national security. Probably the most realistic CIA movie made to date. Good acting, good directing, good writing. But don't take mine or anyone else's word for it; I ask you to read some intelligence literature, both internal company memos and bios of agents as well as critical analysis by scholars, journalists, and historians and you we sill this movie is highly realistic and accurate.
Because the genre that the movie is in is relatively weak (espionage,political thriller) this is a 5-star movie, but as as a drama or thriller its a 4 star. Its gonna take a hell of a movie to top this in terms of realism and accuracy. By the way the movie is based on the non-fiction book "The Very Best Men: The Daring Early Years of the CIA".
 A ponderous film to watch May 23, 2010
Dennis Brandt (Red Lion, PA United States)
What do you get when you combine some of Hollywood's best talent? In the case of The Good Shepherd, you get a really boring film with a multitude of problems. With multiple confusing flashbacks, a myriad of characters whom we never get to know in any depth, and more than 2 and 1/2 hours of watching Matt Damon look really, really serious to the accompaniment of really, really dreary background music, you end up with a perfect cure for insomnia. Not once did I care about any of the characters, which is critical to the success of this film. They all seemed to be moving underwater, which is a good analogy to describe the pace of the film. Intellectually, I got the point of what the characters did, why they did it, and the gut-wrenching nature of their actions, but it never hit me in the gut. Had HBO done this as a 10 to 12 hours mini-series, I believe it would have worked wonderfully because they could have fleshed out the characters.
TOTALLY UNDERWHELMING! May 4, 2010
Bambi Shangri-La (Phoenix, AZ USA)
This movie had more energy in the trailers and previews. Overall, the story was good but it just dragged out way too long. Matt Damon was superb as usual (makes you wonder how he and Ben Affleck ever ended up as friends!). Not much for Angelina Jolie to do here, except pout her already too-pouty lips - her role was horribly underwritten or, perhaps, better suited for a lesser voluptuous luminary. I got what the writer was trying to say. It just took too long to say it! Whenever the action (which was in short supply) lost my attention, I spent most of my time trying to figure out how does a person living in a house which appears to be in upper Northwest Washington, take a bus labeled "12th & Pennsylvania Ave", pass right by that stop which is technically the end of the line, travel several blocks south, cross over the Potomac River via the 14th St. Bridge towards Virginia (you can see the Jefferson Memorial on the right), then double back to mile to end up in McLean, VA at the CIA - WITHOUT EVER GETTING OFF OF THE BUS TO TRANSFER!! I was born and raised in DC back in the old days before the Metro subway system, riding buses all over town, so that bus route kinda bafflee me. Even if the CIA was housed someplace else back then, the 12th & Penn bus has NEVER passed the Jefferson Memorial! But, maybe that was the "undercover governmental covert routing" that the rest of the city knew nothing about! Seems like we are still being spoon-fed stuff like that fake-me-out "One step for mankind" studio video that NASA put out in the 60s!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 279
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