The Good Shepherd: A Review of the 2006 Film Starring Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie

The Good Shepherd (2006) is a lengthy, epic drama set in the 1950s and 60s about the birth of the American CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency. The film's ethos is one of 1950s America - nice, white, two-parent families in nice suburban homes raising nice children, with properly mowed lawns, and a car in every driveway. There is an inherent trust in the goodness of family and of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant America, and a deep distrust for the way the rest of the world works.

We see things in director Robert De Niro's well-crafted story through the life and flashback memories of one Edward Bell Wilson, a fictitious character who is portrayed as one of the key players in the CIA's early history, especially in the counter-intelligence wing of that agency. Wilson is said to be based partially on the real historical figures James Jesus Angleton and Richard M. Bissell, a real counterintelligence agent. He is played by actor Matt Damon in that actor's noteworthy first attempt at a stand-alone lead role in a drama of this kind. (Damon has clearly matured since the boyish days of Good Will Hunting (1997).) Wilson's distant and mostly estranged wife Clover is played by the beautiful Angelina Jolie. Robert De Niro also acts as the gruff but good-hearted General Bill Sullivan.

The film begins with a cryptic segment of video tape that has come into Wilson's possession. In the clip, a man and woman in black-and-white footage are in a mysterious bedroom together kissing passionately. The woman says in heavily accented English, "I love you. People who really love each other don't have secrets. You are safe here with me." Wilson watches this over and over again from his stately white Washington, D.C. home in 1961, believing it has something to do with the ongoing Bay of Pigs incident in Cuba. We also hear in the background the newscast of President John F. Kennedy assuring the public that there will be no Americans involved in the actions going on in Cuba. Thus, the film begins with one of the most prominent failures of the CIA's counterintelligence work, the failure of CIA - supported Cuban loyalists to land in the Bay of Pigs (Bahia de Cochinos) and take back the Cuban government from Communist dictator Fidel Castro.

Wilson has in his possession the key to that failure, the tape that will ultimately show where the leak of information came from that allowed Castro to know the whereabouts of the invaders and defeat them. But the tape is unclear. It has been doctored up and changed so much that Wilson will need several days to allow his technical team to clean it up. Over the course of those days we will see a series of flashbacks -- Wilson's memories -- that will lead us through Wilson's student days at Yale, his friendship with John Russell, Jr., his abrupt marriage to Clover Russell, his early days and idealism in the CIA, and the birth and childhood of his son Edward, who will play a significant role in the unfolding of the plot.

Edward's first flashback is his Skull and Bones days at Yale. Skull and Bones is a secret society with many powerful congressmen, senators, and lawyers in its ranks. Among them is Edward's classmate and friend, John Russell, Jr., the Senator's son. John asks Ed to tell the Bonesmen his most guarded secret, something he has never told anyone, something he would have to trust his Bonesmen brothers with. He tells the story of his father's suicide, which occurred, interestingly, on the 4^th of July, when Edward was a boy.

Edward takes John, as well as Richard Hayes and the rest of the Bonesmen, into his confidence, as he explains that he witnessed the suicide and took the suicide note from his father's jacket, never showing it to his family. "Did you ever read the note," Hayes asks? "No," Edward says, quietly and succinctly. The fact that Edward didn't read the note is indicative of his character. He is a man of duty and honor. He acts out of duty. He doesn't possess the basic human curiosity that would have led him to read the note (although he does open it up at the end of the film).

The next person Edward trusts is his English poetry professor, Dr. Fredericks. As he talks with this man after class in his office, Fredericks says there's so much he'd like to share with Edward. Fredericks comes on to him sexually, then he reads him something he claims to have written, a poem that begins, "A bud has burst on the upper bow." It is not the sexual come-on, but the later discovery of the plagiarism of the poem, that begins to make Edward suspicious of Fredericks.

Edward is approached by FBI agent Sam Murach to ask if he will spy on Fredericks, a role which Edward reluctantly accepts. Murach (Alec Baldwin) places his hat on a bench that Edward will have to walk by. Edward passes it without so much as a second glance. This again is indicative of his character. Edward successfully exposes Fredericks' American German Cultural Committee, a Nazi front. This is the beginning of Edward's success as a covert agent. (Edward later learns that the story is more complex: Fredericks was an undercover agent for British intelligence, using his Nazi front as a way to identify threats in the United States. Fredericks later becomes Edward's British "tutor" in counter-intelligence, a field which Edward will pioneer in the U.S.)

Edward meets a young deaf woman named Laura while at Yale. As he dances with Laura one evening, the announcement is made that England and France have just declared war on Germany. Edward takes Laura to a hotel room, which is her suggestion, but he does not force himself on her when she says she just can't have sex with him at that time. She thanks him for "being so nice." This sidebar shows a different, softer side of Edward. He is capable of love, but, perhaps tragically, this love for Laura will be pushed aside as he answers his call to duty. Duty always seems to outweigh Edward's personal desires and preferences.

The next woman Edward meets is John's sister, Margaret "Clover" Russell. As John goes off to fight with the English, Edward and Richard Hayes are approached by the gruff General Sullivan (Robert De Niro), who asks Edward if he'd be willing to join the fledgling Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a foreign intelligence service that is in fact the historical predecessor of the CIA. Edward makes love to Clover, who becomes pregnant. Even the love-making act seems mechanical and dutiful. It's as if Edward only does what he is expected to do in each situation. Edward is asked to marry her, and he again answers this call, for the sake of the boy. He does not love her (he loves Laura), but that doesn't matter as he doesn't seem to matter to him; it a matter of duty.

As Edward ages and the flashbacks continue, he becomes well-defined in his role with the Agency. His capacities for complexity and suspicion are good tutors for him, as they allow him to discern the motives of his enemies. His silence and seriousness are known with respect even among the Russians. He is known to "Ulysses," the head of Russian intelligence, as "Mother," because of his self-sacrificing desire to see all go well and to care for the Agency's people and the American people. As the film progresses we see the central question develop: Who is the good shepherd? Is he the man who loves and sacrifices for his country, or the man who loves and protects his family? In Edward's case family is often sacrificed to country. "You must decide what is of more importance to you, your country, or your son," Ulysses tells him.

Edward's tragic failing is that he cannot reconcile family with country, nor the desires of his heart with the duty and propriety of his mind. Even early in the film we see that he struggles with fathering, with the simple task of comforting a nightmare-frightened Edward, Jr. He chooses a wife based on duty and propriety alone. He raises a son who comes to fear, not love, him. His son's words are telling as he appraises his childhood, "Safe?! I never felt safe! Everything was a secret!" This must come as a major blow to Edward, whose single desire was to protect and keep safe those he loved, through the use of secrecy. It is that same secrecy that allowed Edward to be so successful in the work world of the CIA, and yet so unsuccessful in the smaller, more intimate sphere of family. Matt Damon conveys that somber secrecy with an excellence that is Oscar-worthy, and the slow, lilting music and dark lighting add a tone of suspicion as well. De Niro is said to have planned this film as his pet project for ten years, and his hard work has paid off. While not Oscar-worthy for direction or overall concept, The Good Shepherd is one of the better dramas of 2006 and will be memorable as the best modern CIA movie around (It is Oscar-worthy for Damon's performance as Edward.). The film achieves, in Edward Wilson, the feat of bringing to life the human face of a secret intelligence organization.