| | | The Untold Story of the Birth of the CIA.
Features: DVD, Widescreen, English, French
Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie and Robert De Niro star in this powerful thriller about the birth of the CIA. Edward Wilson (Damon) believes in America, and will sacrifice everything he loves to protect it. But as one of the covert founders of the CIA, Edward's youthful idealism is slowly eroded by his growing suspicion of the people around him. Everybody has secrets - but will Edward's destroy him? With an all-star cast including Alec Baldwin, Billy Crudup, William Hurt, Timothy Hutton and John Turturro, it's the gripping story David Ansen of Newsweek hails as "spellbinding."
"One of the most impressive movies ever made about espionage." David Denby, The New Yorker
"...smart, thoughtful, psychologically complicated script...truly fascinating." Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
"...you have to admire De Niro's moxie. He's mounted a handsome production..." Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
"Damon is terrific...so is everyone else in this intricate, understated but ultimately devastating account..." Richard Corliss/Richard Schickel, Time
"A remarkable study of the corrosive effects of fear and power..." Walter Addiego, San Francisco Examiner
Editor's Note
With THE GOOD SHEPHERD, Robert De Niro (A BRONX TALE) makes an ambitious return to the director's chair. A labor of love for Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (FORREST GUMP), the film tells an epic, fictionalized account of how the Central Intelligence Agency was born. Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, a reserved young man who graduated from Yale in the late 1930s. His membership in the exclusive, hidden Skull and Bones society led him away from poetry and into a relationship with the federal government, who recruited him to help them on several covert operations. Roth's script alternates between Wilson's gradual emergence as a genuine government operative in the early 1940s and the infamous Bay of Pigs conflict in the early 1960s. Along the way, he has a sweet romance with a pretty deaf girl (a sparkling Tammy Blanchard) and ends up marrying the woman he impregnates (Angelina Jolie) out of a strong sense of duty. Throughout the film, the emergence of a mysterious tape haunts Wilson, who is determined to uncover the truth behind a leak in his secret organization.Production designer Jeannine Claudia Oppewall (L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN) and costume designer Ann Roth (THE ENGLISH PATIENT, THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY) faithfully recreate these earlier periods in American history, while the imagery of Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson (J.F.K., THE AVIATOR) casts a warm, stately glow upon De Niro's assembled cast of luminaries (including Alec Baldwin, Michael Gambon, William Hurt, Billy Crudup, and Joe Pesci). The result is a production that recalls Francis Ford Coppola's THE CONVERSATION and Steven Spielberg's MUNICH.
| Features | Audio: English, French Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 Surround Sound | | Deleted Scenes | | Dubbed: French | | HD-DVD & DVD Combo! Both Standard & HD-DVD Versions On One Disc | | Interactive Menus | | Scene Selection | | Subtitles: English, French, Spanish |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Universal |
| Release Date: 4/3/2007 |
| Running Time: 168 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 2006 | | Catalog ID: 61032678 | | UPC: 00025193267825 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English, French Dubbed | | Available Subtitles: English, French, Spanish | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Widescreen 2.40:1 |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Nominee (2007) | | | Oscar, Jeannine Claudia Oppewall, et. al., Best Achievement in Art Direction |
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| | Professional Reviews | Entertainment Weekly
"[Damon] has excelled at subverting the all-American openness he projects....Here, he's the ultimate enigma machine, a man willing to erase himself for his country." -- Grade: B 12/22/2006 p.56Entertainment Weekly
Included in Entertainment Weekly's "Top 10 Films Of The Year" -- "It's a movie that perches you on the edge of your brain." 12/29/2006 p.106 Total Film
3 stars out of 5 -- "[With] a killer cast, with character-actor stalwarts like Alec Baldwin, William Hurt and Michael Gambon filling out its most minor roles." 03/01/2007 p.36 Box Office
"[T]he story it tells -- about the early years of the CIA...is simply too compelling to dismiss..." 02/01/2007 p.73 Uncut
"[De Niro] proves here that - like Clint Eastwood - he can direct a mature, questioning film without didacticism or pomp." 03/01/2007 p.114 Movieline's Hollywood Life
"The period details are hypnotic, and the message is ripe for the moment." 03/01/2007 p.108 Sight and Sound
"Intelligent, cleverly written and extraordinarily well crafted and performed, THE GOOD SHEPHERD boasts a subtlety and depth you won't find in the world of Jason Bourne or James Bond." 04/01/2007 p.63 USA Today
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "Matt Damon is terrific....The rare long movie that's at its strongest near the end." 04/06/2007 p.8E Ultimate DVD
4 stars out of 5 -- "De Niro's faith in the audience's intelligence is refreshing, making this rewardingly complicated viewing that is bolstered by the film's ambitious scope and lavish production values." 06/29/2007 p.31 ReelViews 9 of 10
The Good Shepherd is Robert DeNiro's fictionalized account of the birth and early years of the CIA. While the names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent, many of the characters have real-life counterparts. The lengthy movie (15 minutes shy of three hours) unspools like a cold war spy novel, with betrayals, double-crosses, triple-crosses, and fluid allegiances...The Good Shepherd is equally fascinating as a character drama and as a cold war thriller...The bottom line is that The Good Shepherd is engaging cinema. The length is a drawback, but not a big one since the movie earns the majority of its 165-minute running time. De Niro pulls the viewer into the world he has created and holds him there, sometimes spellbound, until the story is over and the end credits roll. - James Berardinelli
Reel.com 8 of 10
Thirteen years after he made an auspicious directorial debut with the affectionately observed coming-of-age story A Bronx Tale (1993), Robert De Niro resoundingly beats the sophomore slump with The Good Shepherd, a sweeping and richly entertaining historical drama about the rise of the CIA, based in part on the real-life experiences of the organization's enigmatic founder, James J. Angleton. Handsomely crafted and impeccably acted by an all-star cast, this quietly riveting and meticulously detailed film presents a fascinating portrait of Cold War-era espionage through the experiences of Edward Wilson...Unfolding at a thoughtful, measured pace, The Good Shepherd may not hold you completely in its grip over the course of its nearly three-hour running time, but its excessive length in no way blunts the power of this intriguing and sharply drawn film. - Tim Knight
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