Movie Review The Good Shepherd

The Good Shepherd (2006)

Directed by Robert DeNiro 

Written by Eric Roth

Starring Matt Damon, Alec Baldwin, Michael Gambon, Joe Pesci, Eddie Redmayne 

Release Date December 22nd, 2006

Published December 21st, 2006

Playing a super spy has been great for Matt Damon's career. As secret agent Jason Bourne, Damon has found world wide stardom and massive blockbuster returns. Now for his latest super spy role, Damon goes an entirely different direction. As Edward Wilson the protagonist of The Good Shepherd, Damon helps track the founding of the Central Intelligence Agency and the rise of real life spycraft.

With no karate moves, or even a gun, Damon crafts yet another exceptionally watchable spy character; though not one likely to be sequelize.

Edward Wilson's (Matt Damon) initiation into the spy game was heartbreaking. Wilson was approached by an FBI agent (Alec Baldwin) and informed that his favorite professor (Michael Gambon) was a Nazi sympathizer. Using his trusted position in the professors inner circle, Wilson attended a party with the professor and a Nazi intelligence officer during which Wilson steals the evidence necessary to hang his mentor.

Of course were you to believe any of what you see in the spy game, you are not really much of a spy. Robert De Niro's unique, sometimes breathtaking, always absorbing spy drama The Good Shepherd is filled with twists and turns that will leave lesser audience members dazed and confused. With a complicated time shifting narrative, and a close to the vest, poker faced performance from Matt Damon, The Good Shepherd can, at times, seem impenetrable. Audiences willing to invest in the film's complications will be rewarded with one of the better spy pictures they've seen in a long while.

Charting the founding of the CIA with the fictional story of a man who became that institution's backbone, The Good Shepherd indulges in some spy cliches but justifies those cliches by acting as if this film invented them. Check the multi-layered double talk that Damon engages in throughout. If you are paying attention you might be able to decipher what the characters are saying. If however, your attention span doesn't allow for languid pacing and complicated scripting, you might want to sit this one out.

The Good Shepherd draws you in slowly and rewards you with a movie watching experience that is absorbing and almost hypnotic. Damon's performance is aloof but daringly so. His Edward Wilson is consistently duplicitous and frighteningly quiet and calculating. At the same time, the secretive nature of the character is seductive. He puzzles you with his elusiveness so that in the rare moment that we catch an emotion flash across his face; it nearly takes your breath away.

Robert DeNiro's direction of The Good Shepherd is precise without ever becoming mechanical. His warm, dark visual style works at  odds with a coldly efficient story. The Good Shepherd is classic, old school filmmaking, reminiscent of the kind of complex storytelling prevalent in the 60's and early 70's when movies weren't dominated by the need to satisfy younger demographics. This is a smart, adult minded movie that works at its own pace. If it drags in the middle; it's as much a function of the modern attention span as it is DeNiro's expensive form of storytelling.

The Good Shepherd is an absorbing, though slightly overlong, spy tale that features yet another career-making performance by Matt Damon. Robert DeNiro's direction is understated and underestimated. All of those years working with Scorsese have paid off in DeNiro's great eye and scene setting ability. And, thankfully, the story is as strong as the acting and direction.

The Good Shepherd needs a bit of a trim around the middle, but overall, this is an easy film to recommend. A smart, adult minded thriller with a classical sense of how to tell a story.

Movie Review City by the Sea

City by the Sea (2002) 

Directed by Directed by Michael Caton Jones

Written by Ken Hixon 

Starring Robert DeNiro, Frances McDormand, James Franco, Eliza Dushku, William Forsythe

Release Date September 6th, 2002

Published September 8th, 2002

Ok I know what your thinking, DeNiro is playing a cop AGAIN?  However I would ask you to think of it differently. I see DeNiro playing a cop in City By the Sea much like Springsteen playing Thunder Road. We have heard him play it lord knows how many times and its not always great, but when Springsteen hits that perfect pitch and finds his groove, Thunder Road becomes a new song as if you had never heard it before. That is what DeNiro does in cop movies, and in City By the Sea DeNiro has found the groove. 

In City By the Sea, DeNiro is Vincent Lamarca, NYPD homicide cop. LaMarca lives somewhat contently alone in an apartment one floor above his girlfriend, Michele, played by Frances MacDormand. The relationship is still blossoming but seems to be serious. However, LaMarca is distant and is hiding some painful family secrets. Secrets that are about to collide and impact his personal and professional life.

While on the job LaMarca and his partner Reg (George Dzundza) latch onto a murder case about a drug dealer floating in the Hudson. The body has floated down the coast from Long Beach, where many of Vincent's secrets await him.

Earlier in the film, even before we meet Vincent, we meet his son Joey played by James Franco. Joey is first seen wandering the boardwalk trying to sell a guitar and it's obvious why. Joey is a junkie. After scoring, Joey and a friend go looking for more and visit a drug dealer named Picasso. The deal goes bad and Joey murders Picasso. Joey and his friend dump the body in the river and I think you know the rest.

So the plot is a little contrived and a great exaggeration from the 1997 Esquire article by pulitzer prizewinning journalist, the late Mike Calary. The plot is merely a contextual convenience, something to motivate the more interesting drama. The great part of City By the Sea is the relationships between the characters. 

DeNiro and MacDormand have amazing chemistry, DeNiro and Franco are perfect counterpoints, and even DeNiro and Dzundza shine. While Dzundza,a highly underrated character actor, gets stuck in the one role everyone knows will be tragic, he and DeNiro make up for it with the ease of dialogue that make both more wellrounded and fleshed out characters.

The other star of the film is it's setting, played as Long Beach on the coast of Long Island New York. In actuality it's the Boss' home turf of Asbury Park. The rundown boardwalk shown in the opening credits as it looked in it's heyday, looks as if it has a thousand stories of it's own to tell. The abandoned casino where Joey lives reminded me a lot of the Dance Hall in Carnival Of Souls. Whether that is intentional I can't say but the look of the casino and Franco's ghostly visage do at least hint at homage.

City By the Sea isn't perfect, as I stated the plot is pure convenience. But the characters and the relationships they develop are magnificent, especially loved DeNiro and MacDormand.

For the first time in a longtime we are treated to an adult relationship that feels real. There is no easy rapport, no all consuming over the top passion. Merely two adults who have found comfort in one another at a time when they desperately needed it. In a scene set in a coffee shop we watch an actual adult conversation of real weight and emotion that never panders to the audience and never begs for emotional reaction. It just is what it is, two adults having an intelligent conversation. We take for granted just how rare that is in modern Hollywood.

Movie Review Showtime

Showtime (2002) 

Directed by Tom Dey 

Written by Keith Sharon

Starring Eddie Murphy, Robert DeNiro, Rene Russo, Kadeem Hardison, Nestor Serrano 

Release Date March 15th, 2002

Published March 14th, 2002 

The buddy cop movie is a dying genre. For every Rush Hour and Lethal Weapon there are any number of odd couple mismatched partners. One partner is the gruff vet, the other is the crazy wildman. They fly around big cities fighting drug dealers and terrorists, blowing up city blocks and killing any number of people with no consequence. The latest example of this mindless stupidity is the Deniro-Murphy mismatched buddy cop movie Showtime.

Robert Deniro is the gruff but lovable detective who breaks all the rules, and always gets his man. Deniro's most recent bust cost the city of Los Angeles millions of dollars. The only way to pay the debt is to team up with a pretty TV producer (Rene Russo) for a Cops-style reality TV show. Of course Deniro, while he's a good cop, isn't very friendly. The producer decides he needs a wacky partner. Enter Eddie Murphy as a beat cop who wants to be an actor. Eddie sees the TV show as a way to further his acting career. So now we have our gruff but lovable lead and wacky off the wall partner, now we need a colorful bad guy.

Well the bad guy in Showtime wasn't all that colorful, I honestly can't remember whether the baddies were drug dealer or terrorists. Actually, they might have been drug-dealing terrorists. It doesn't really matter.

Eddie Murphy is a spectacularly funny actor, but he needs to make better decisions. As the star of Beverly Hills Cop, Murphy was Mr. Attitude. He was the coolest guy in the room and he knew it. In Murphy's most recent roles he has allowed himself to become less confident, less cool. Murphy has allowed himself to be made the fool. Eddie's appeal is as the Bugs Bunny of the action movie. He is at his best when his character is one step ahead of everybody, cracking wise and kicking ass. In Showtime and his most recent work he has been buffoonish and it's not fun to watch. Like Willie Mays with the New York Mets or Michael Jordan with the Washington Wizards, Eddie Murphy has lost a step.

It isn't just Murphy that makes Showtime a dull movie. Combine Murphy's performance with Deniro's sleepwalking and the lame dying mismatched buddy cop movie and you get Showtime. 

Movie Review Godsend

Godsend (2004) 

Directed by Nick Hamm 

Written by Mark Bomback 

Starring Greg Kinnear, Rebecca Romijn Stamos, Robert DeNiro, Cameron Bright 

Release Date April 30th, 2004

Published April 29th, 2004

The moral and ethical debate over cloning is fervent ground for drama. That drama was well explored in the little-seen 1997 sci-fi film Gattaca with Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke. That film was set in a universe, years in the future, where cloning was more than a reality, it was a way of life that had replaced nature with science. The latest examination of the thorny issue of cloning takes place in a modern context, a time when cloning is almost a reality. Godsend however, is not as much interested in the science or  morality of cloning as much as it is interested in atmospherics and melodrama.

Adam Duncan (Cameron Bright) has just celebrated his eighth birthday. His mother Jessie (Rebecca Romijn) and father Paul (Greg Kinnear) are happily married living in New York City but they are contemplating a move to the suburbs to find a safer place to raise their son. Their idyllic family life is shattered when a tragic car accident kills Adam as his mother watches helplessly.

At Adam's funeral, the couple meets Dr. Richard Wells (Robert De Niro) who has a strange offer for them. Wells is an expert geneticist and he claims to have perfected a way to clone a human being. Wells' offer is to use some of Adam’s cells, which are useful only for 72 hours after his death, to clone the child back to life. The child can then be genetically replicated and placed in his mother’s womb. Just like in-vitro fertilization, the child could be carried to term and re-born as Adam Duncan down to the last hair on his head.

There are some rules that the couple must agree to first.  One is that the couple must move to Massachusetts to be near Dr. Wells' Godsend research clinic. They must then sever all ties with friends and family. Finally, Dr. Wells must be the only doctor Adam ever sees. Aside from that, the doctor sets the couple up with a beautiful house and a teaching job for Paul. The couple can raise Adam as if he had never died, starting over from his birth. The only question is what will happen to Adam when he crosses the age at which he died.

That last part is where the film draws most of it's drama but it's also the most dubious of the contrivances of the film. There is never any kind of scientific or theoretical reason given for why anything in Adam would change when he turned eight years old, the age he was when he died the first time. It's not like the kid can have all of the experiences he had from his first life again. He's going to meet all new people, spend time with Dr. Wells, go to a different school, his parents are different people than they were before his original death. 

I realize that I am asking questions that the makers of Godsend would rather avoid but these are the questions that this plot raises and it is a fatal flaw for this movie that they can't answer those questions. That could be as easy as making Dr. Wells the real villain, a man trying to turn this boy into an Omen, Damien style villain but that doesn't happen. Robert DeNiro is far too checked out and obviously bored to try and be part of this plot anyway. 

First-time director Nick Hamm does a good job creating a creepy horror atmosphere. Even in the film’s dream sequences, Hamm never resorts to CGI trickery, preferring to create his atmosphere naturally. A challenge he more than meets with the help of cinematographer Kramer Morganthau. Nick Hamm's other achievement is making this cute kid Cameron Bright a viably dangerous presence right up until the end when the film’s second big contrivance kicks in and snuffs out what was good about the film. As the director told Sci Fi Wire, they shot five different endings. Unfortunately, they chose the wrong one.

Greg Kinnear is such a reliable dramatic presence that he is able to ground the film in some kind of reality. Kinnear makes both Rebecca Romijn and Cameron Bright better for having worked with him.

If only Robert De Niro had paid a little more attention to his understated co-star. Lapsing into Jeremy Irons like self-parody, De Niro over-emotes, eats the scemery and generally throws dirt on his legend that grows more tarnished by each subsequent late-career performance.

Godsend isn't as bad as I am making it seem. The director Nick Hamm is very talented and Greg Kinnear is giving it his all to sell this deeply flawed premise. Sadly, with DeNiro lapsing into parodyh out of seeming boredom, and the logical failures of the script and premise, there was no overcoming the flaws in Godsend. Creepy visuals and strong sense of atmosphere are great but when your audience is busy deconstructing your plot flaws instead of being impressed with the look and feel of your movie, it's just not working. 

As muich as I have issues with the movie, I will say that if want to see Godsend, see it for Greg Kinnear genuinely good performance and for the low-tech horror atmosphere created by talented director Nick  that works without any CGI trickery, something most films can't resist.