The Good Shepard
Good Shepherd is a Boring Waste of Time
The Good Shepherd is the story of Edward Wilson a bright, sociopathic ambitious, rich little white boy. He starts off by betraying his mentor a poetry teacher at Yale so he can get a job with the government in intelligence. Later he has the poor guy brutally murdered because the government didn’t like his choice of friends. His next betrayal is getting the sister of his politically connected “friend’ pregnant and marrying her. Every step along the way the character betrays everyone not for God and country but for himself and himself only.
They say that this picture is the Godfather picture of the CIA. In the Godfather we have the Al Pacino character start off as a young idealistic solder just back from WWII who is changed by events into a cynical uncaring mob boss. Here we have a cynical uncaring Yalie turn into a cynical uncaring CIA apparachnik. In the Godfather we also learn a lot about the history of the Mafia in an interesting way and we also learn why the mob does the things it does. In this movie there is no history of the CIA only a few incidents told in a confused boring way. As for learning about the CIA the film provides no explanation or understanding only examples of mindless people doing evil.
Every critic will tell you that if a movie has any chance of being good then one must care about the main character. I didn’t care about the Mat Damon character in this story. Actually Arnold Swirtchanager in the Terminator was more interesting and articulate then this character. I don’t blame Mat Damon for being boring. He was asked to play a boring character and he nailed it. Robert De Niro deserves all the blame for taking an all star cast and wasting them by turning them into boring drones. Spy movies are inherently exciting but through hard work De Niro took an interesting story and made it into a boring one.
What we have is De Niro selling out to the critics because he knew that any film that made the CIA look bad would get a good review. And then we have the reviewers put their political views ahead to the interests of their readers. The movie stinks and any rating above a C is a sell out.
The Good Shepherd is the story of Edward Wilson a bright, sociopathic ambitious, rich little white boy. He starts off by betraying his mentor a poetry teacher at Yale so he can get a job with the government in intelligence. Later he has the poor guy brutally murdered because the government didn’t like his choice of friends. His next betrayal is getting the sister of his politically connected “friend’ pregnant and marrying her. Every step along the way the character betrays everyone not for God and country but for himself and himself only.
They say that this picture is the Godfather picture of the CIA. In the Godfather we have the Al Pacino character start off as a young idealistic solder just back from WWII who is changed by events into a cynical uncaring mob boss. Here we have a cynical uncaring Yalie turn into a cynical uncaring CIA apparachnik. In the Godfather we also learn a lot about the history of the Mafia in an interesting way and we also learn why the mob does the things it does. In this movie there is no history of the CIA only a few incidents told in a confused boring way. As for learning about the CIA the film provides no explanation or understanding only examples of mindless people doing evil.
Every critic will tell you that if a movie has any chance of being good then one must care about the main character. I didn’t care about the Mat Damon character in this story. Actually Arnold Swirtchanager in the Terminator was more interesting and articulate then this character. I don’t blame Mat Damon for being boring. He was asked to play a boring character and he nailed it. Robert De Niro deserves all the blame for taking an all star cast and wasting them by turning them into boring drones. Spy movies are inherently exciting but through hard work De Niro took an interesting story and made it into a boring one.
What we have is De Niro selling out to the critics because he knew that any film that made the CIA look bad would get a good review. And then we have the reviewers put their political views ahead to the interests of their readers. The movie stinks and any rating above a C is a sell out.
posted by flamestarrants | 3:36 PM
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