“The Good Shepherd” was a longer movie than I anticipated but I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. There was so much to see, hear and think about as the characters accompanied me through the very well written, adult script.
Movies tell their story using visual images and there aren’t many words spoken (as opposed to a novel). In either format it’s difficult to bring full dimension to a writer’s characters, to make them human rather than cardboard representations –but the characters in “The Good Shepherd” felt like real people that I got to know in more than two hours. I could feel what their daily lives were like–and in the case of Mr. Wilson, played by Matt Damon, how he came to make his difficult choices–be it love with a woman and/or love for his country.
If you’ve read anything about “The Good Shepherd”, you know that it’s about the birth of the CIA–but it’s much, much more than that.
By the time the credits rolled (and the cast is impressive; wait ’til you see) I had felt a lot of fear, learned that even though I was born the same year the CIA came into being, under certain political circumstances I might just be considered a visitor in the USA– and, most of all, the movie’s message to me was that I (just an ordinary person) should never ever trust anyone. Not anyone.
“The Good Shepherd”–a movie not to be missed.