The Bad Shepherd
Posted by mike on June 20th, 2007
After several weekends travelling around for one event or another, we finally got a weekend to stay at home and relax. And since all of our favorite TV shows have wrapped up for the season and we have caught up with what’s on Tivo (or at least Emily has… I still have like 25 episodes of Supernatural and History Detectives to watch), we finally took the opportunity to rent a couple of movies this weekend. So, with a gift card and free rental coupon in hand, I headed for Blockbuster.
Let me just say that it has been quite a while since we’ve actually rented a movie. Despite being 8:30 on a Saturday night, I quickly found at least six movies that I wanted to watch and that I knew Emily would be game for, as well. I phoned her and we settled on The Pursuit of Happyness (Will Smith) and The Good Shepherd (Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Robert DeNiro, William Hurt, Alec Baldwin, lots of others).
Although both of these movies were nominated for Oscars, Happyness makes it clear that there is a lot of mileage between “Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role” (Will Smith as Chris Gardner) and “Best Achievement in Art Direction” (3 people) . Will Smith also received a Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal as the hard-luck driven Gardner. We thoroughly enjoyed Happyness, which is best described as a heartwarming tale about chasing your dreams, not giving up, and standing by your family when times are tough.
The Good Shepherd, on the other hand, was 160 long minutes of us going “What’d he say?” and “What year is it now?” The story jumps between events of the early-mid 40s, and events of the 1960s. It’s a dark movie about the early days of the CIA, but there is little action to keep you tuned in. In fact, if they had made a movie about the early CIA agents doing their paperwork, it might have been just as exciting. The only thing I drew from this movie is how difficult it must be to live a life so full of secrets that you trust no-one and no-one trusts you. Emily did not finish this movie, and I only did because I can’t stand to start a movie and not finish it, regardless of how bad it may be.
PS. Don’t forget to please Register with this site! =)
June 21st, 2007 at 6:20 am
I’ve seen both of these movies. Pursuit of Happiness is good, but I thought The Good Shepherd was awful. I had really been looking forward to what I thought was going to be a CIA thriller, but was severely disappointed.