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Actors: Matt Damon, William Hurt, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, Billy Crudup, Michael Gambon, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Timothy Hutton
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| Review Summary and Plot Commentary about The Good Shepherd |
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Edward Wilson (Damon), is an earnest poetry student at Yale in the late 1930s when he joins the ultrasecret society Skull & Bones. This club has connections that lead to his recruitment to the Office of Strategic Services, a secret government espionage agency that's the forerunner to the CIA.
Although a secretive, diffident guy, Edward attracts the attention of Margaret Russell (Jolie), nicknamed "Clover," the sister of a wealthy classmate. Edward has been seeing a lovely deaf girl named Laura (Tammy Blanchard), but a roll in the grass with Clover at a party results in her getting pregnant and Edward marries her. War is declared and Edward is whisked off to service in England for the duration. As a result, he comes home a stranger to his wife and five-year-old son Edward Jr. after the war.
The Cold War takes up the rest of his career, culminating in the abortive Bay of Pigs invastion of Cuba in April 1961. Edward searches for the answers to why the invasion failed -- not least because somebody's head will roll -- at the same time as he has his technical experts try to decipher a shady photograph of a couple in bed and a tape recording of some of their conversation which was left anonymously for him to find.
Edward Junior follows his father's footsteps into the CIA. Edward meets his old deaf girlfriend again, and his wife moves out to Arizona. The Cold War, a longtime Russian counterpart he first met in Berlin in 1945, his British spy colleagues, and his unhappy family life will all come to a collision with the answers to his questions about the Bay of Pigs, the photo, and the tape recording. This 2006 film was a ten-year "pet project" of director Robert De Niro, who appears in a cameo as the CIA founder, General Bill Sullivan.
--David Loftus, Resident Scholar
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| Analysis of The Good Shepherd |
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Composition of Movie
Actual chase scenes or violence - 10%
Planning/preparing, gather info, debate puzzles/motives - 60%
Feelings, relationships, character bio/development - 30%
Time/Era of Movie:
- 1960's-1970's
Spying & Terrorists
Yes
Cloak & Dagger Plotlets:
- main char doing spying/sabotage
The terrorist enemy is...
- commies!
Main Character
Identity:
- Male
Profession/status:
- spy
Age:
- 40's-50's
Hair color?
- brunette (Brown)
Hair style
- short/standard straight (man)
Body type
- average (man)
Unclothed?
- Chest
Events of movie makes character more...
- sad
Ethnicity/Nationality
- White (American)
How sensitive is this character?
- middling sensitive to others' feelings
Intelligence
- Smarter than most other characters
Physique
- average physique
Secondary Main Character
Identity:
- Male
Hair color
- blonde
Body type
- average build (man)
How much in movie?
- 40%
Ethnicity/Nationality
- White (American)
Main Adversary
Identity:
- Male
Age:
- 40's-50's
Profession/status:
- spy
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in:
- 40%
Ethnicity/Nationality
- Russian
Intelligence
- Smarter than most other characters
Physique
- average physique
Sense of humor
- Cynical sense of humor
How sensitive is this character?
- middling sensitive to others' feelings
Setting
United States
Yes
The US:
- Northeast
Europe
Yes
European country:
- England/UK
Africa
Yes
Part of Africa:
- Black Africa
Style
Accounts of torture and death?
- very gory visuals of deaths and torture
Movie makes you feel...
- concerned
How many deaths in film?
- 4-8
Sex/nudity in movie?
Yes
What kind of sex:
- kissing
- actual description of sex
How much use of techno gadgets?
- 3 (some)
Kind of violence:
- guns
Unusual forms of death
- dropped from large heights
Is this movie based on a
- book
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Resident Scholar Profiles
TOP SCHOLAR:
 David Loftus
SCHOLARS:
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Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s). | |
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