- Matt Damon is just wonderful. His character is quite literally the strong, silent type and he does so much in saying so little. His absolute control over his emotions and his behaviour is absolutely astounding. Ten points, dude. I do still wonder how Leonardo DiCaprio would have fared in the lead role, but that’s more fangirl curiosity than thinking someone else would have done it better.
- I love how there are standard movie trailer editing techniques to convey very basic characterisations, only sometimes you secretly hope that you’re purposely being misled to retain the element of surprise for the actual film. Such as: in the trailer there’s this shot of Billy Crudup where the motion is slowed down somewhat as the voiceover mentions something about not being able to trust anyone. ZOUNDS! I BET HE’S NOT TRUSTWORTHY. And then you secretly hope you’re being misled… and you’re not. Yep, he’s working for the Russians. Quelle surprise!!
- Speaking of trailers, I hate it when something in the trailer doesn’t make it into the final cut of the film. I was waiting all movie for Matt Damon to say “Set the mongoose free” and he never did.
- Complaint #1 — At times the story was so focused on the past that you forgot exactly what they were investigating in the current time line, which is sort of weird considering they’re trying to figure out just what went wrong with the Bay of Pigs invasion and that’s not exactly a minor event in 20th century American history.
- Complaint #2 — Er, what exactly was the purpose of Joe Pesci’s character? I actually somehow forgot he was in it — despite the fact that this was one of my key reasons for seeing this movie — and then he showed up for approximately three minutes. He was supposed to be offering the CIA help in exchange for not being deported, but either we never found out what it was he was doing or I somehow missed that when I blinked. I wonder if that scene was not cut — because it really could have been, for all the relevance it had in the film — because Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro are friends and Pesci hasn’t been in a movie since Lethal Weapon 4 (1998). At any rate, he had a ridiculously awesome statue of the Virgin Mary on his front lawn.
- I just love how the various intelligence agencies integrate within each other, both covertly and obviously. I love how easy it was for Matt Damon’s Russian counterpart to slip in and out of the United States despite being a Soviet agent, and I love how, ultimately, that agent was the only friend in his life. I loved the bit when he realised his German secretary after the war was indeed a Soviet spy, omg.
- It was sort of disconcerting how the guy playing Matt Damon’s and Angelina Jolie’s son actually looked like he could secretly be their love child, what with him having her lips and his freckles.
- The ending is supposed to be rather ambiguous in a “Did he or didn’t he order the hit on his son’s fiancé” sort of way, but you know he totally did. Christ, he’s such a cold hearted bastard, it’s astounding.
- I have to stop watching movies in which people like Matt Damon get to hug children because it does funny things to my ovaries.
- It’s two hours and forty-five minutes long but doesn’t feel that long at any point. Amelia made a good point when she said “You know a movie is good when the first time you check your watch is at the two-hour point, not to see how much longer it’s going to be but to see just how much time you have left with the movie.”
- I don’t really get why the critics et al aren’t loving this. I am really rather fond of JFK-era, Cold War paranoid America with espionage and conspiracy, so maybe that’s why this appeals to me. It’s a movie you definitely need to watch more than once because it’s really dense and there’s a lot of little things going on that you can’t pick up the first time round.
- The actor I have learned to love this year is Alec Baldwin. I previously had an irrational hatred of him for reasons I can no longer remember, but I love him in The Aviator, I love him in The Departed, I love his narration in The Royal Tenenbaums, and I loved him in this. What the hell, Alec Baldwin, you’ve finally won me over.
The Good Shepherd
Matt Damon is A+++++++++++++.
IMDB Plot Synopsis The tumultuous early history of the Central Intelligence Agency is viewed through the prism of one man's life.