The Good Shepherd
When I was about 9 or 10 years old, I went to the cinema with my best mate to see a comedy called ‘Bigfoot and the Hendersons’. He’d already seen it and raved about it being the best film ever made and persuaded me to go with him just so he could watch it again…
I remember that throughout the film he kept excitedly leaning over and telling me what was about to happen, “This next bit is great, Harry falls through the floor onto the pool table!”, “Harry’s gonna make a great siren sound!” etc etc, totally ruining any comedy timing along with the film. (Not that it was that good to start with)
Anyway back to the present day (twenty years later) I sit down to watch The Good Shepherd only to find that it was an English subtitled screening. Tchaa!! Yup, it was like a Bigfoot commentary all over again. Only this time it was relentless and automated… oh noooooo!!!
But I won’t let that bias my in-depth review of this movie. I’m bigger than that. Sorry what did you say? No, really I am!!
So in the spirit of fairness, I’ll start by summarising all of the good points about this film.
Ok, with those thoroughly covered, let’s move onto the bad points:
1) It’s 2 hours and 47 minutes of tedium. In fact at one point, my mind and entire face was so numb with the story that I found my jaw had gone floppy and I’d started drooling in sheer boredom.
2) Matt Damon looked younger than his son. How does that work?
3) Why didn’t Matt Damon change his clothes or age in 30 years?
4) …and why is he trying to out-wooden-act Tom Hanks in ‘The Da Vinci Code‘?
5) ……AND one of my all time movie pet hates:
[really really bad tape recording plays...]
“Can you wash that?”
“Yes, we’ve so far cleaned it up to reveal that odd buzzing sound is actually an aeroplane taking off which is less than 1,000ft off the ground. Also, there’s a church bell in the background. And, by the sound of it, there’s a ceiling fan in the room which was made in Belgium. So putting all this evidence together, I therefore deduce that this room must be in the Congo.”
Seriously. Yeah, right-o.
Now I’ve got lots of respect for you Mr De Niro as an actor, but dude, as a director - you really suck.
1/10. (which is just for the unintentionally funny ‘exposure’ line)
March 1st, 2007 at 11:29 am
Three fricking hours of a bloke sitting at a desk talking on the phone and occasionally going home to argue with his wife. Who in their right mind looked at the script and thought “yeah this will make a great movie”. Boring with a capital “Oh dear god please kill me now!”
March 1st, 2007 at 7:22 pm
This easily made my top worst ever films list.
It joins Crash (1996), The Interpreter, Zoolander, Napoleon Dynamite and The Big Lebowski. I’m sure there’s more which I’ve blotted from my memory.
March 2nd, 2007 at 10:24 am
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March 7th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
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