De Niro makes intrigue interesting in
The Good Shepherd
.
Spy movies are usually filled with gadgets and beautiful women. The emotional realities of the spy game are nonexistent next to the glamorous perks. In his second directorial effort, Robert De Niro has taken the aesthetics of the mobster movies in which he made his
career and transferred them to change the
way spies are portrayed.
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The Good Shepherd
follows Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), a well-off, preppy Yale poetry student, from his college days to the Bay of Pigs and a successful career with the newly formed CIA. While Damon has portrayed a spy before in the
Bourne
series, Damon's Wilson couldn't be more different.
Jason Bourne is a muscular, quick-moving, acrobatic hit man. Wilson gathers intelligence through quiet meetings with contacts and his exposure to violence is limited to observation-much as all social interactions for Wilson seem to be. He is never open and laughing with anyone except a college sweetheart who disappears from his life abruptly and early on.
The lack of emotional connection in
The Good Shepherd
makes it both fascinating and frustrating to watch. The stone-faced men of the CIA, all played by distinctive-looking men (Alec Baldwin, Billy Crudup, Michael Gambon, William Hurt and Robert De Niro), can't and don't trust anyone, not even each other or their families. Wilson enters into an emotionless marriage with Clover/Margaret Russell (Angelina Jolie), whose frustration with his secrecy is reminiscent of Diane Keaton's in
The Godfather
. Neither Wilson nor Russell has genuine feelings for the other, and they never seem interested in getting to know each other. Even the sex scene between the two actors-known for the sexuality and physical beauty they emit-is as lifeless as their marriage. When they meet, Clover is a strong woman looking for the perfect husband and Wilson appears to fit the bill, though he is too weak and misunderstanding of women to avoid submitting to her.
Throughout the film, it is Wilson's passivity and lack of emotional engagement that make him the
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perfect spy. Contacts feel they can trust him because he trusts them so little.
The deceptive world is brought out in a gray-washed hue. Berlin, Washington, DC, and even Cuba appear in a foggy haze of deceit. Grainy newsreel footage is interwoven to give texture to a world where men in fedoras and overcoats blend into their surroundings.
De Niro has taken a risk with
The Good Shepherd
. He's taken a story in which the secretive nature of the characters is held up throughout the film, making it impossible for the audience to connect or sympathize with them. Wilson is neither hero nor anti-hero, simply the man around whom the story takes place. In some moments, he tries to act tender-and what one assumes he feels is normal-but in each instance, he fails. Watching this failure is the only way to sympathize with him, knowing that his closed-off character is who he is, and that it makes him the spy he needs to be to survive.
The risk, however, pays off.
The Good Shepherd
is a realistic story of the men who, in Wilson's words, "keep the wars small." These are the men who hide in shadows around the world, unnamed and without faces, but whose influence reaches throughout the world-through knowledge rather than technology.
