The Good Shepherd (film)
| The Good Shepherd | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Robert De Niro |
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| Written by | Eric Roth |
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| Music by | |
| Cinematography | Robert Richardson |
| Edited by | Tariq Anwar |
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Production
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| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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167 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $90 million |
| Box office | $99.5 million |
The Good Shepherd is a 2006 spy film produced and directed by Robert De Niro and starring Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie and De Niro, with an extensive supporting cast. De Niro also produced it with James G. Robinson and Jane Rosenthal.
Although it is a fictional film loosely based on real events, it is advertised as telling the untold story of the birth of counter-intelligence in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The film's main character, Edward Wilson (portrayed by Damon), is loosely based on James Jesus Angleton and Richard M. Bissell.
This was Joe Pesci's first film appearance after his six-year hiatus from acting between 1999 and 2005.
Eric Roth, the film's screenwriter, began to work on the project after he abandoned his attempt to bring Norman Mailer's Harlot's Ghost to the screen. Like De Niro's film, Mailer's novel is a fictionalized chronicle of the CIA. The film received mixed reviews, and the box office earnings were not much higher than the film's budget.
A photograph and an audio recording on reel-to-reel tape are dropped off anonymously at the home of Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), a senior CIA officer, after the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba fails due to an undisclosed leak. While riding to work on the bus, Edward is approached by a young boy who asks if Edward has change for a dollar. Upon arriving at work, Edward's assistant checks the serial number of the dollar against a long list of serial numbers assigned to various code names and confirms that Edward has been given a dollar from "Cardinal". The story then flashes back to 1939.
In 1939, Edward is a poetry major at Yale University and is invited to join Skull and Bones, a secret society. He is compelled to disclose a secret as part of his initiation: he reveals that as a young boy in 1925 he discovered the suicide note left by his father, Thomas (Timothy Hutton), although he says he never read it. After the ceremony, a fraternity brother tells him that Edward's father, an admiral, was to be chosen as Secretary of the Navy, until his loyalties were questioned. Afterwards Edward is recruited by an FBI agent Sam Murach (Alec Baldwin), who claims that Edward's poetry professor, Dr. Fredericks (Michael Gambon), is a Nazi spy, asking Edward to expose his professor's background as well as implying that the Professor is homosexual: Edward's actions result in Dr. Fredericks' forced resignation from the university.
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Wikipedia