The Not-So-Good Shepherd

There is a mystery at the heart of The Good Shepherd that kept me scratching my head and holding on to the edge of my seat for the resolution. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the tape being carefully scrutinized by a team of CIA analysts, and it wasn’t the question of whether Edward Wilson would choose to protect his son or his country. No, the mystery for me was: why the heck did Angelina Jolie take this part?

Angelina Jolie was Oscar-nominated for Girl, Interrupted, and proved her mettle as an action hero in Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. She matched Brad Pitt incredible stunt for incredible stunt in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and now she’s reduced to playing June Cleaver? I mean, what gives? Did she owe Robert De Niro after losing a poker game? Was she dying for the chance to kiss Matt Damon (aren’t we all!)? Did her agent book this part 10 years ago?

Whatever the reason, Ms. Jolie plays a harried housewife who never sees her husband and isn’t really sure what he does all day at the office. She looks incredible as she worries over whether he’s going to make it home in time for dinner, and her lips are as luscious as ever as she throws a fit after he makes her look foolish in front of her friends.

Matt, of course, is the star of this film. He’s in almost every frame and although that ought to be enough for me, I’m afraid I just didn’t understand the point of it all. Yes, it shows us the beginnings of the CIA, but I never understood why the agency was created. Wasn’t there already an FBI? What does the CIA do that the FBI doesn’t? The film also spends quite a bit of time on a character named Valentin Miranov, played by either John Sessions or Mark Ivanir (and to say more would ruin 35 minutes of footage), and his association with a character named Stas Siyanko (or Ulysses, as secret war nicknames go), but to what purpose? Who is he to us? Or to Matt’s character, Edward Wilson? Or to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences?

And then there’s the matter of Edward Wilson, Jr. and how he wets himself on Santa’s lap. What was that about? I was guessing it had some sort of psychological meaning associated with a child who idolizes but rarely sees his father. Although, why he would idolize a man who blithely tells him to go back to sleep after he’s just admitted to having a nightmare is beyond this confused audience member. This kid, who gets virtually no attention at all from the man who occasionally comes home to sleep in a separate bed from his mother, decides he wants to work in the same field as the guy who ignores him on his way in to answer the phone. And exactly why might that be? Don’t look for answers here, folks, ‘cause Mr. De Niro, as the director, apparently thinks they’re not important.
People are brought onscreen briefly and then get killed in this film, and although the death of a young woman is fairly spectacular, I can’t say that it mattered much to me, as we’d barely been introduced to her. All of it, I think, was to show how Edward Wilson separated his own feelings from the business in which he toiled. As Sally Bowles opined in Cabaret, his philosophy might be “That’s just politics and what’s that got to do with us?”

Angelina Jolie seems to age a bit in this film, but Matt is forever 22 – even when his son graduates from college. Of course, to me, Matt will always be the 27-year-old luminescent man I met in The Rainmaker, but this is a little ridiculous. His son grows up and over him and Matt still looks like he’s gearing up for Hell Week at the frat house. And speaking of frat houses, the hazing ritual that takes place at the Skull and Bones Society (purported to include presidents and senators among its members) looked to me like something out of a gay fetish film. Naked mud wrestling while getting peed on from the balcony above may play well at gay S&M bars like The Spike, but I sure didn’t expect to see it in a Matt Damon film! Not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you. The scene was included, I suspect, to show what great lengths Edward Wilson would go to in order to be a part of such a revered brotherhood. He almost bows out of the club as the urine soaks into his mudpack, but he’s talked into sticking around. I imagine this experience helped him later realize that everyone is out to pee on you, which made him more and more paranoid and less and less likeable. In fact, the only one he really likes himself, a deaf woman named Laura, kind of pees on him too as she lures him to a hotel and then decides she can’t go through with it, leaving poor Edward in a state of confused arousal.

Speaking of confused arousal, I was, as always, quite taken with the image of Matt on the screen (and the image of him lying naked in a box as he discusses his father’s suicide will stay with me for a loooong time to come), but I don’t think his performance was particularly effective in this film. Yes, I got that he was playing a cold man who pushes his emotions down and who has no sense of humor. But I didn’t really buy him as the man who orders the deaths of others. It always seemed to me that everything was happening around him, not happening because of him. And there never seems to be the faintest hint of either remorse or satisfaction on his face when anything happens. I suppose this is because he’s a cold man who pushes his emotions down, but I’m afraid it doesn’t make for a very interesting movie.

And why is it called The Good Shepherd anyway? Manohla Dargis of the New York Times says it refers to Jesus' quote "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep." However, to whom in this film would that quote refer? Edward Wilson doesn't lay down his life. And he certainly doesn't seem to care much for any of the sheep he's protecting. So, in conclusion, I must say I don't really think I'll be losing any sleep waiting for the DVD to come out. Excpet for that incredibly brief (and rather unrevealing) nude scene, there isn't much to recommend this film at all.