OVP: The Good Shepherd (2006)

Film: The Good Shepherd (2006)
Stars: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Robert de Niro, Alec Baldwin, William Hurt, Joe Pesci, John Turturro, Billy Crudup, Tammy Blanchard, Lee Pace, Eddie Redmayne
Director: Robert de Niro
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Trying to recreate The Godfather is a fool's errand.  One of the truly perfect cinematic masterpieces, it hangs as a shadow over so many movies since it's creation, with really only one man (Francis Ford Coppola) able to duplicate it, and that was as a sequel (and that was only once-just ask any film fan).  A quiet, introverted epic about one family's journey, the movie is legendary for a reason-no one else has been able to achieve such a towering, studied look at an organized syndicate.  But that doesn't mean that people don't try, and perhaps few people should be allowed more leeway to pursue such a venture as Robert de Niro.  De Niro has only directed two films in his career, the first being the commercially-dismissed but critically-praised A Bronx Tale, and the second being this movie, a three-hour (fictionalized) look at the earliest days of the CIA.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie, at 167 minutes in length, is expensive, but it's main focus can be summed up in a few lines.  Essentially, we have Edward Wilson Sr. (Damon) who is working for the government during the Cold War in the 1960's during the Bay of Pigs invasion.  We alternate back to his present day, where we learn about his life, his early romances with a deaf woman (Blanchard) and the sister of a friend at Yale, where he's in the Skull-and-Bones, whom he gets pregnant (Jolie).  We also see as he happens, through luck and skill, to eventually be recruited into government channels not available to regular people, in counterintelligence that will eventually become the CIA.  While this is happening, we see others in his web betray him or be subsumed by scandal, and he watches as his wife and son (a very young Eddie Redmayne) struggle with his stoicism, eventually ripping his family apart in pursuit of his career.

This is all very, very similar to The Godfather, with Edward Wilson becoming our Michael Corleone, and while there's no Don (kind of William Hurt, but not really), it's interesting to see just how similar the films are considering that A) de Niro is a major component of that film series and B) how the film fails when it has so many of its components borrowed from a filmmaker who saw the original made first-hand.  The problem with The Good Shepherd is first that it never really justifies its length-the movie is overstuffed with oftentimes repetitive points (how many times can we see Damon's Wilson be betrayed), as if de Niro is trying to shove all three Godfather movies into the same movie.  The film becomes meandering, and while that is likely how it won its sole Oscar nomination (getting to cover decades of furniture, offices, and interiors we get at a "most art direction" sort of citation without ever getting into a traditional British costume drama or fantasy film, which is where "most art direction" is usually used as a criticism), but it makes the picture pretty dull, and takes away the few moments of intrigue it generally lays out.

The second problem is the acting.  Damon is one of those movie stars who has natural charisma, but does better work in lighter films as he confuses serious with lifeless, and his Edward Wilson is without personality in the worst way possible.  It's unfair to compare any performance to Al Pacino in The Godfather, but as they are so similarly structured it's hard not to see that while Pacino lets us into Michael's world and then slowly closes the door, Damon just keeps it closed shut, so all we see is this person whom we don't really care about for three hours.  Jolie's performance is bordering on terrible as his wife, her fight scenes becoming hyperbolic & she seems to have no connection to her other than "this scene I'll play her happy" or "this scene she should be sad."  It's underwritten, but it's hard to imagine that both of these people are Oscar winners based on just this movie.  The best part of the movie is arguably Pesci as a mobster in one single scene.  Pesci came out of his prolonged retirement to make this film, and it was worth it, showing he has lost none of his ability to land a scene.  But the rest, even de Niro himself, are underwhelming in a movie that just sits there, trying to be important but instead is a snooze.