The Good Shepherd

The good shepherd has always struck me as a strange symbol for Christianity. Shepherds look after their flocks purely so the sheep can be killed and eaten. What's good about that? Fortunately, sheep don't have the intelligence to be paranoid.

With The Bourne Identity under his belt, Matt Damon has a good pedigree to play spy movies. Is this one a killer, or dead on arrival? With a budget of $85m, we've got Oscar-winning actors, writers and cinematographers, and more stars than flocks by night ever get to see. Pet project of actor/director Robert De Niro, The Good Shepherd tells a story of the CIA from its early days, weighing in at just under three hours.

The scene before the opening credits is the one which the whole film revolves around, so get your popcorn early, because this is a tantalisingly mysterious and artistically remarkable shot. A couple are making love. We can't see them clearly, as they are probably filmed from a hidden camera. "You're safe here with me," she whispers to him. Yeah right! Obviously they are key characters in a complex web of CIA chicanery, because Damon and his team spend most of the movie trying to figure out who, when and where, and we have to wait till nearly the end to find out.

Although The Good Shepherd is told from Damon's point of view, its scope is epic, covering the years from 1939 before the CIA was even a speck in President Truman's eye, to 1961 and the Bay of Pigs. We see the founding years, learning from British intelligence, the London Blitz, post-war reconstruction in Berlin and increasingly intricate machinations as the Cold War gathers pace.

Edward Wilson (Damon) is recruited while still at Yale - and we see his face in one of the very few scenes where it holds anything but inscrutability. He camps it up in drag for a production of Gilbert & Sullivan. Later, he's initiated into Yale's famous secret society, Skull & Bones. He starts dating a deaf girl, whom he meets in the library. He feels genuine affection for her, but she is a bit slow off the mark and no competition for Clover (Angelina Jolie), who seduces him, without taking no for an answer. Jolie doesn't feature in much of the movie, but when she does, she's as sexy as hell, or acting her socks off.

Fast forward. A week after his dutiful wedding to a pregnant Clover, Edward is posted abroad for six years, during which time he learns to Trust No One. He also learns useful stuff like "tying one's shoelaces" (code for "bump them off, please") and how to spot a German mistress telling porkies - and then tying one's shoelaces again. Every so often we flash forward to 1961 to an increasingly hemmed-in and worried Edward, who's trying to figure out the pre-credits scene.

This is not a whitewash job - most of the history has been painstakingly researched. People get bumped off, or tortured. Developing countries are subverted with economic dominance and espionage, and most of Edward's decisions are based on inaccurate, or false information.

Instead of getting someone like John le Carré to write the script, or a CIA whistleblower like Philip Agee, we have polished performer and safe bet Eric Roth (Munich, Ali, The Insider, Forrest Gump). As a result, The Good Shepherd is comprehensively professional, without the grit to make waves.

De Niro, in the director's chair, is sadly the weakest link. Although he handles it well, almost magisterially, he lacks the experience to slowly build momentum, convey gradual moral decay, or make this the Godfather standard bearer of CIA films. He's done a fine job, just bitten off a bit more than he can chew. What he deserves credit for is attempting a classic depiction of one of the world's most important institutions and pulling it off with considerable dignity, if not quite the artistic flourish that he would have aspired to, given that his mentors are people like Francis Ford Coppola (who was an executive producer on the movie).

Of all the stellar names associated with the project, special mention should go to director of photography Robert Richardson, whose beautiful lighting, compositions and framing give the film a very classy look. Using mise-en-scène rather than relentless action effects, he allows us time to soak up the atmosphere of lovingly reconstructed sets, which add a feeling of history. Many of the English scenes are shot in subdued tones, reminiscent of The Godfather, and convey a growing ominousness. Fades from archival footage to full colour are tastefully accomplished and maximise the effect of both. My one reservation is the overuse of unnecessary close ups, which seems to suggest too keen an eye on the DVD market.

The Good Shepherd is a slightly over ambitious, over long movie, which you should see for Damon's naked mud wrestling and Jolie's hot vamp performance. If you keep your expectations lower than the hype suggests, you may well remember and enjoy the images of this beautifully portrayed, if relatively plotless, film.