Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that although older teens may be interested in this adult-targeted thriller because of stars Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie, it's slow going (and long) and has mature political and moral themes. Violence is frequent (weapons include guns, knives, and bombs and tanks during WWII in London), with two suicide scenes (one via gunshot, the other via jumping out a window) and a graphic torture scene in which CIA agents abuse a Russian spy. Edward and his fellow pledges are urinated on during a naked mud-wrestling scene. Edward has sex with three different women (not explicit, but you see bodies moving), and a surveillance film showing two people having sex appears repeatedly. Characters smoke cigarettes frequently and drink, sometimes to excess. Some language (four uses of "f--k").
Families can talk about the movies' fascination with espionage. Why are spy films so popular? How much of what we see on screen reflects reality, and how much is glamorized? What do you think a spy's day-to-day life is really like? Families can also discuss the lack of balance between family and career in Edward's life. How does his patriotism blind him to troubles at home and at work? How does the movie characterize the men who serve their country in this secret way? How does Edward and Margaret's social situation (especially their class) dictate and limit their options? What messages does the movie send about father-son relationships?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
A complicated, fictionalized version of the birth of the CIA, THE GOOD SHEPHERD considers the blindness and other costs that come with being too committed to a job, even one that involves national security. It begins with a mystery -- a surveillance film that will supposedly reveal the identity of the person who spoiled the surprise of 1961's Bay of Pigs invasion. From the U.S. point of view, this person is a traitor and must be found and punished.
As the embodiment of this perspective, CIA operative Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) pursues the culprit as director Robert De Niro's film cuts back and forth in time, showing how Edward came to be so dedicated to his cause. Affected as a child by a trauma concerning his father (Timothy Hutton), Edward seeks a way to fit in. He finds it when he's invited to join Yale's secret Skull and Bones society in 1939. After impressing various authorities as an earnest, patriotic young man (especially when he turns in a beloved professor as a traitor), Edward is sent to London during WWII, working for the Office of Strategic Services.
At this point, Edward immerses himself fully in what he sees as a man's world, leaving behind his new, pregnant wife, Margaret (Angelina Jolie). He disrespects Margaret -- resenting the fact that he had to marry her following a single sexual encounter -- and still thinks he loves his first girlfriend, the sweet-natured, shy, and deaf Laura (Tammy Blanchard), who comes to represent Edward's lost ideals. In lieu of these ideals, he becomes increasingly involved in his work.
Though he's warned more than once to get out while he still can -- particularly by his early mentor, Dr. Fredericks (Michael Gambon) -- Edward is repeatedly enticed by the sense of belonging he feels in secret societies. And he discovers that rigid morality isn't the priority he once thought; indeed, lying, cheating, and murdering are necessary to protect borders and deceptions, as is the perpetual realigning of affinities. For Edward, the CIA forms a circular logic: Members define the mission, and vice versa.
Recruited by CIA founder Bill Sullivan (De Niro), Edward believes that the group is solely (and nobly) interested in American values and identity. He doesn't see how such values and identity are lost when the group undertakes illegal, violent, racist, and hyper-nationalist operations.
The problem that Edward's chosen profession poses for him is both prosaic and sensational. At one level, the cost of his patriotism is reduced to a common device -- Margaret's recurring complaint that his devotion to national security distances him from his family. This leads inevitably to difficulties between father and son, and the film winds tighter and tighter around this relationship (as an adult, Edward Jr. is played by Eddie Redmayne). "I never felt safe," Jr. says. "I was always afraid because everything was a secret." While The Good Shepherd does concede that secret agencies need to keep secrets, it also rejects the slippery, paranoid morality that follows from such a premise.
Fans might also enjoy similarly complex thrillers like Munich, Marathon Man, and The Falcon and the Snowman.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentA grainy, shadowy sex scene forms a central mystery (it's a surveillance tape, shown repeatedly); Skull and Bones intiates engage in naked mud wrestling (mud covers explicit elements); Edward thinks his teacher at Yale is coming on to him, but he may be trying to draw him into his Nazi group; several kissing scenes; sex scene between Margaret and Edward shows movement, but they remain clothed (they're outside); sex between Edward and Laura results in threats and surveilllance photos (nothing explicit); after sex between Edward and his German assistant (offscreen), her breast is seen briefly; reference to Russians being "short between the legs," and an interrogation subject is stripped (brief full frontal nudity). |
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ViolenceYoung boy hears the shot as his father commits suicide in another room, then sees the body with blood on floor; violent acts include murders and assassinations by gunshot, knifing, strangling, poisoning; images of post-Blitz London (wreckage); several mlitary "operations" show bombs and gunfire; severed finger sent to a character as a threat; naked interrogation subject is tortured, then jumps out a window and appears broken-bodied and bloody on sidewalk below; woman is thrown from a plane (you see her body descending from above). |
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LanguageAbout four uses of "f--k," one use each of "ass," "hell," and "son of a bitch." Sexual slang ("pr--k," "t-ts"). |
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Social BehaviorSpies are devious, curel, and determined, extolling the virtues of patriotism but seemingly achieving their ends at any cost; Edward is distant from his family; his wife resents him and drinks too much, his son acts out his resentment in other ways. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoCharacters drink (wine, champagne, vodka) and smoke lots of cigarettes, partly as an indication of the era and partly to show their efforts at self-medication. Margaret is drunk and angry in several scenes. CIA interrogators inject a subject with LSD to solicit information. |
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