Screenshots: The Good Shepherd

Alan is the cinephile in the house and we’ve been planning on watching movie after movie but hardly have time to do it.  Although we are trying to maximize the fact that my Mom is still here to watch Angel when we go out, I try not to abuse that by choosing our timing and the activities we do. 

While we missed THE DEPARTED, we made time for THE GOOD SHEPHERD this evening.  It’s a pretty long movie but well worth the almost three hours.  Matt Damon, as always, conquers the screen with his underacting.  The younger kids would say this is a “talking movie” — there is some action in it but it’s more of a suspense thriller.  You see the story unravel in a way that keeps you guessing but which you see coming together in the end.  So if you get lost in the beginning, you will have a difficult time piecing the different timelines because the story keeps moving back and forth, although the date captions are helpful in giving context to the scene.  This is one of the few directorial works of Robert De Niro and it is worth the wait between the movies he directs.  The critics did not take kindly to this second movie from De Niro, but as your average movie patron, I left the moviehouse entertained.

There are a lot of one-liners that will be etched in your memory — and there are punchlines which you will only catch if you give the movie your full attention.