Spies aren't super in Robert De Niro's epic docudrama about the birth of the CIA—there isn't a car chase or doomsday device to be found in The Good Shepherd. So, it's surprising that this three-hour tour of thirty-some years of history moves as well as it does.
De Niro is trespassing on the hallowed operatic ground of the Godfather films here, mixing complex family drama with the secret history of a widely feared cabal.
Matt Damon stars as Edward Wilson, a WASPy Yalie whose life parallels the American intelligence agency's, moving from the shadowy Skull & Bones society to the OSS to the CIA, trapped in a loveless marriage (to Angelina Jolie!) and never quite sure whether he's serving the government or the men who control it, whether he'll remain a pawn or one day be king.
The audience is never sure either—Damon presents Wilson as an absolute cipher, a riddle, wrapped up in a mystery, inside varying degrees of (curiously ineffective) age makeup.
Damon's performance is so rigorously controlled, his emoting so limited, that The Good Shepherd is close to being a movie about the robot who founded the CIA. He's only as human as the situation demands, and no more, quite believable as a spymaster who disappears inside himself and the twisty plot, only to emerge when forced to finally choose between country and family.
The Good Shepherd's dense, sometimes muddled story isn't what gives the film its impact—it's Damon, who somehow turns into a ghost without ever leaving the frame. He's always there—but now you see him, now you don't.