The Good Shepherd

Name: The Good Shepherd
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Released: December 22, 2006
Duration: 167 min
Rating: 61
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Matt Damon, Robert De Niro

2006

METASCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 33 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 183 Ratings

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6.5

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6.5	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 183 Ratings

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The Good Shepherd

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Movie Details & Credits

Universal Pictures | Release Date: December 22, 2006 | R

Starring: Angelina Jolie, Matt Damon, Robert De Niro

Summary: The tumultuous early history of the Central Intelligence Agency is viewed through the prism of one man's life in this espionage drama. (Universal Pictures)

Director: Robert De Niro

Genre(s): Drama, Thriller

Rating: R

Runtime: 167 min

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Critic Reviews

100

Walter Addiego

A remarkable study of the corrosive effects of fear and power on an establishment insider who puts duty above all else. Read full review

Stephen Hunter

The Good Shepherd is serious adult moviemaking, a truly surprising effort from De Niro, a man deeply interested in the art, craft and psychology of espionage. He seems to believe that we'd better be interested in it, because it's interested in us. Read full review

Claudia Puig

Deliberately paced, epic and ambitious, The Good Shepherd feels related in tone, mood and style to "The Godfather." Read full review

Peter Travers

Shepherd wants to say something profound about the effect of a deceitful government on human values. But it's tough to slog through a movie that has no pulse. Read full review

William Arnold

In some ways, De Niro does a competent job in his second directorial effort but his characterizations are clumsy, and his members of the Power Elite always seem less real people than stick figures in a propaganda movie. Read full review

Lou Lumenick

A glacially paced, emotionally frosty epic (with a top-drawer cast). Read full review

Ella Taylor

De Niro is damned if he's going to make a standard thriller out of this view from within the CIA, which might be refreshing if his solemn moral parable weren't so lacking in any other kind of juice, and if its hero were less of a round-shouldered, whey-faced organization man. Read full review

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User Reviews

Alexander_Fred

Dec 8, 2011

The Good Shepherd is very much a difficult film to understand. At first glance, it is over 2 and a half hours of boring, sluggish history tracing the early history of counterintelligence within the CIA. But upon second glance, the film emerges as something quite different. Is it at allThe Good Shepherd is very much a difficult film to understand. At first glance, it is over 2 and a half hours of boring, sluggish history tracing the early history of counterintelligence within the CIA. But upon second glance, the film emerges as something quite different. Is it at all entertaining? No. Is it at all thrilling? For brief moments. But all in all, the film is not meant to be entertaining or thrilling. It is meant to be what film once thrived to be: pure art. It becomes difficult when first seeing this film to see the artistic majesty because most of us have become accustomed to watching a monkey throw **** on a wall and then calling that art. The Good Shepherd becomes like the Mona Lisa, but we must first remember that the Mona Lisa is art and **** on a wall is just **** on a wall. Then we see that this film is perfect because it is art, a true artistic piece of cinema.… Expand

0 of 2 users found this helpful02

edb.

Dec 30, 2006

Intriging, suspensful through out, For those who did not like it perhaps they did not want to think. Matt Damon was teriffic.