The Good Shepherd (Widescreen Edition) | 
| Actors: Alec Baldwin, Matt Damon, Robert De Niro, Keir Dullea, Michael Gambon
Studio: Universal Studios
Category: DVD
List Price: $12.98
Buy Used: $0.01
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Rating:  266 reviews
Sales Rank: 6288
Format: Ac-3, Dolby, Dubbed, Dvd, Extra Tracks, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: French (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), French (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 168 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 61028671
UPC: 025192867125
EAN: 0025192867125
ASIN: B000MXPE7O
Theatrical Release Date: December 22, 2006
Release Date: April 3, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
A complicated movie about the Central Intelligence Agency and its agents, The Good Shepherd isn't your typical spy movie. Though it stars Matt Damon (The Bourne Identity films) and Angelina Jolie (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Lara Croft franchise)--actors with considerable experience in the action-espionage genre--The Good Shepherd requires that they play more subdued and (much less interesting) characters here. The movie focuses on the career or Edward Wilson (Damon), a privileged Yale graduate who goes on to help found the CIA. He is a quiet, serious, and guarded man, even in the most intimate moments with his civilian wife (Jolie, in a role that wastes her talent). Set against a backdrop of real-life events such as the Bay of Pigs, The Good Shepherd is meticulous in creating a realistic timeframe. The film gets a jolt of excitement when Robert DeNiro (in his first directing role since 1993's A Bronx Tale) peppers the screen with appearances by Joe Pesci, Alec Baldwin, and William Hurt. But those moments are too infrequent. At 157 minutes long, the film is crammed with many factual details, but the characters are shortchanged when it comes to development. Viewers have to wonder why anyone, much less someone like Wilson who has everything going for him, would devote his life to a thankless job that brings so little happiness to himself and his family. The Good Shepherd is an ambitious but flawed film. The actors do a formidable job with a well-intentioned but meandering script. However, we meet so many characters and learn so little about each that it's difficult to drum up much empathy for any of them. --Jae-Ha Kim
Product Description
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."System Requirements:Runtime: 168 mins Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: MYSTERY/SUSPENSE Rating: R UPC: 025192867125 Manufacturer No: 61028671
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| Customer Reviews: Read 261 more reviews...
 Out of sedatives, watch The Good Shepherd. April 3, 2009
I respect Robert De Niro and Matt Damon, but have they conceived what ingredients should be incorporated into a movie to make it the least bit watchable? By min. 20 I thought I was at least 90 min. into the movie. The only words in my diction I care to employ to describe this movie are tedious, sleep-inducing, ineffective, irritating, and interminably long. Hopefully De Niro and Damon will make more approachable movies from now on.
 The Good Shepherd - Metaphoric History of the CIA February 23, 2009
Joseph J. Slevin (Carlsbad, CA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
With a very slow moving story, we are brought through the beginnings of what some may view of how the CIA developed in the first few decades. Matt Damon does an excellent job portraying a very quiet, somewhat cold hearted man who gets recruited by the CIA while studying at Yale.
We have a number of flashbacks and forwards that you must keep an eye on to make sure you know where you are. Interestingly developed as a story, you see one man's life influenced by what he does for the company. Although a very interesting story, there are messages you see in the movie. One is a scene where someone is wearing one of the infamous hoods from the Abu Gharib tortures, this is supposed to be 1959 or 1960, so, the message here is that this type of thing has been common since then.
Interesting things include the development of the character played by Damon through the beginnings with WWII and the relationship with the spy networks in England.
The play of Damon and his colleagues, the intrigue, the distrust and the final culmination of his work. The Good Shepherd plays as a metaphor of sorts, reflecting how one man's life applies to the beginnings and development of the agency.
2 stars out of 4 January 28, 2009
One-Line Film Reviews (Ann Arbor)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Bottom Line:
Agonizingly long and additionally slow because Matt Damon's lead character is blandness personified, The Good Shepherd sounds good on paper but should be avoided at all costs: it fails as a history lesson and it sure as heck fails as a movie.
 This Shepherd Needed A Shorter Flock January 22, 2009
D. Mikels (Skunk Holler)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Wow. THE GOOD SHERPHERD is such an intriguing movie--and such a departure for Matt Damon; if only director Robert De Niro (and I so look forward to watching his future directorial offerings) had left about half an hour of film on the cutting room floor this film would have been as exceptional as it would have been extraordinary. With a running time of close to three hours, the story inevitably bogs down and gets in its own way; but that's about as much badmouthing I'm going to give a movie I enjoyed as much as this one.
Depicting a promising young Yale grad picked by Army intelligence to work behind the lines during World War II, then tapped on the shoulder to help found what became the CIA, Matt Damon is absolutely riveting. His character, Edward Wilson, sacrifices everything--his personal life, his family--for espionage, intelligence, and counter-intelligence, as America enters the Cold War. Damon is stoic, devoid of emotion, soft spoken, unflappable--cold and heartless. Nothing seems to move him--even when his own son hangs in the balance. The events surrounding him--the Second World War, the Cold War, the Bay of Pigs, his son's ill-advised contacts with CIA targets--are spellbinding.
And you can't go wrong with Damon's supporting cast, including De Niro himself, William Hurt, and Alec Baldwin, just to name a few. John Turturro plays an effective, sometimes brutal, assistant to Damon's Wilson, yet unfortunately, Angelina Jolie is utterly wasted (pardon the pun) in a reduced role as the neglected, drunken wife. THE GOOD SHEPHERD is well worth the lengthy viewing; just make sure you have plenty of time to appreciate what it brings to the table.
--D. Mikels, Author, The Reckoning
A great spy-film deserves a better DVD January 21, 2009
Jason Bean (Iowa City, IA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Good Shepherd is easily one of the best spy films ever made. It's got brilliant (and understated) acting, perfectly paced direction, and excellent use of (a very cold) tone running throughout it. It's also an excellent story using human drama (much like John Lecarre) to move the various scenes forward.....in short a great movie given lack-luster DVD treatment.
The DVD itself has "16 minutes" of deleted scenes and...well..that's it. No "making of", no interview with the cast, no story-boards, NOTHING. This is a huge shame mostly because the film itself turned alot of people off with it's dense plot and cold characters and I think a commentary or "making of" would've been the best thing to help people along. This could've opened the movie's fan-base and given people a new respect for it. Again, this is a totally missed opportunity.
I'm still giving this DVD 5-stars because the film's just that good. The picture quality is great and if you're a fan of this movie while it was in theaters you'll love revisiting it.
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