The Good Shepherd
The Good Shepherd is an Academy Award-nominated 2006 film directed by Robert De Niro (his second directorial effort after A Bronx Tale) and starring Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie, with an extensive supporting cast. The film was rated "R" for "some violence, sexuality and language" by the MPAA. 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. It is a Morgan Creek Productions film distributed by Universal Pictures. The film's main character, Edward Wilson (played by Damon), is loosely based in part on James Jesus Angleton and Richard M. Bissell, Jr. William Hurt's character, Phillip Allen is based on Allen Dulles, and General Bill Sullivan, played by Robert De Niro, is loosely based on Major General William Joseph Donovan.
Actor
Role
Robert De Niro Bill Sullivan
Matt Damon Edward Wilson
Angelina
Jolie Margaret 'Clover' Russel Wilson
Alec Baldwin Sam Murach
Billy Crudup
Arch Cummings
Tammy Blanchard Laura
Keir Dullea Senator John Russell,
Sr.
Michael Gambon Dr. Fredericks
Martina Gedeck Hanna Schiller
Timothy
Hutton Thomas Wilson
Gabriel Macht John Russell, Jr.
Joe Pesci Joseph
Palmi
Eddie Redmayne Edward Wilson, Jr.
John Sessions Valentin Mironov
#1/Yuri Modin
Oleg Stefan Ulysses/Stas Siyanko
John Turturro Ray Brocco
Liya Kebede Miriam
Plot
In 1961, the Bay of Pigs
Invasion fails due to a (then undisclosed) leak. Afterwards, a photograph and
recording on reel to reel tape are dropped off anonymously at the home of Edward
Wilson (Matt Damon), a senior CIA officer.
The narrative flashes back to 1939: Wilson is attending Yale University and is a new member of Skull and Bones, a secret society that aims to create bonds among future leaders of the United States. As part of his initiation, Wilson must reveal a secret: the secret he chooses to reveal is that as a young boy, he discovered his father's (Timothy Hutton) dead body and a suicide note. Edward hid and kept the note, but chooses not to read it. Shortly after the Skull & Bones ceremony, Wilson is recruited by an FBI agent (Alec Baldwin), who claims that Edward's poetry professor Dr. Fredericks (Michael Gambon) is a Nazi spy and asks Wilson to find out who his associates are. Wilson complies, and Fredericks is fired.
At a Skull & Bones retreat on Deer Island in 1940, General Bill Sullivan (Robert De Niro) asks Wilson to join the OSS and offers him a post in London. While considering this, Wilson begins a romantic relationship with a deaf woman named Laura (Tammy Blanchard), however, this relationship is short-lived.
While attending a friend's party, Wilson meets Margaret 'Clover' Russell (Angelina Jolie), his friend's sister, and they make love in the woods behind his friend's house. Later, Wilson learns that Clover is pregnant and is approached by her brother who wants to know if Wilson will "do what is expected of him." Wilson does, and promptly marries Clover. During the wedding reception, an army courier arrives, reiterating General Sullivan's offer of a position at the London office of the OSS. He accepts, wherupon the courier then hands over Wilson's orders, requiring him to be in England in one week. To his surprise, Wilson's former university tutor Fredericks is also in London; he is actually a member of British Intelligence. While at Yale he had sought to infiltrate a Nazi organization, causing the American authorities to think that he was a Nazi spy. Edward's betrayal of his professor had ruined two years of espionage work. Despite this, Fredericks had recognized Edward's gifts and recommended him to be trained in counter-espionage methods in London.
British intelligence officer Arch Cummings (Billy Crudup) tells Wilson that Frederick's indiscriminate homosexual relationships pose a security risk and asks Edward to deal with his former mentor. Fredericks refuses Wilson's chivalry and tells him to "quit the dirty work" while he "still has a soul." However, he understands if Wilson wants to "tie his shoe" (a signal to watchers that the meeting had gone badly). Wilson demurs, which prompts Fredericks to kneel in front of Wilson and tie his shoe for him. As the meeting finishes, Fredericks leaves Wilson and is killed after turning a corner.
The timeline moves to post-war Berlin, where the Allies and the Soviets, in a race for technological superiority, are each trying to gather as many German scientists as possible. Wilson encounters his Soviet counterpart, codenamed "Ulysses," who praises him as a formidable adversary. Wilson interviews potential German informants with the aid of a female interpreter, Hanna Schiller (Martina Gedeck), who wears a hearing aid. When Wilson makes a rare phone call home, he inadvertently learns from his son, Edward Wilson, Jr., that Clover is seeing another man. After the phone call, Hana enters Wilson's office and invites him to her house. After she cooks for him, she asks him to stay and they end up making love. While they are having sex, Wilson realizes that Hana does not need her hearing aid and that she is a Soviet operative who has infiltrated OSS activities. Wilson has Hana killed, and lets Ulysses know that he did it.
Wilson returns home after six years and is greeted by Clover (who now calls herself Margaret) and Edward gives his son a model ship inside a glass watch casing. He then finds out from Margaret that her brother was killed in the war and she confesses that she was seeing other men. When she asks Edward if he had any relationships, Edward replies that he "made a mistake." General Sullivan approaches Wilson again to ask for his help forming a new foreign intelligence organisation (the CIA) where Wilson will work with his former colleague Richard Hayes (Lee Pace) under Phillip Allen (William Hurt). Wilson accepts, hiding the details of his job from his wife's friends and other acquaintances.
Wilson is told to interview Valentin Mironov, a Russian requesting asylum and claiming to be a high-ranking official who knows Ulysses. While attending a theatre with Mironov and Cummings, Wilson encounters his old sweetheart Laura. Wilson and Laura go to a restaurant after the show and they catch up on old times before having sex at Laura's house.
While Wilson is at a Skull and Bones dinner, Margaret anonymously receives photos of Laura and Wilson getting into a taxi and kissing before going back to Laura's house. She interrupts the dinner, throwing the pictures at him. Wilson later breaks up with Laura by sending a messenger to return a jewelled crucifix of hers which he'd kept from when they were college sweethearts.
Wilson gets a call from a Soviet defector (Mark Ivanir) stating that he is the real Valentin Mironov and the person who they know as Valentin is a fake: his real name is Yuri Modin, a KGB operative working for Ulysses. Wilson does not believe him, and his men torture the Russian in an attempt to find out his true identity. The defector resists their torture, even enduring waterboarding. Eventually, he is administered liquid LSD which causes him to behave erratically but he hangs on to his identity solidly; he shouts that he is Valentin Mironov and commits suicide by jumping through a glass window. This refers to[citation needed] an actual event where a US Army scientist (Frank Olson) died in a similar way, allegedly as a result of unwitting participation in CIA-conducted LSD experiments called MKULTRA.
Wilson visits his son, Edward Wilson, Jr., at Yale, where he has also joined the Skull and Bones society and is approached for recruitment by the CIA. Margaret (Clover) tries to convince Edward to talk their son out of joining, but Edward Jr. signs up anyway, to become closer to his distant father. This causes a further rift between Wilson and his wife, and she eventually moves to Arizona to live with her mother. Later, Wilson discusses the upcoming Bay of Pigs invasion with Hayes. Edward, Jr., overhears the discussion, and Wilson tells him that he cannot repeat what he overheard to anyone.
Time passes and the Bay of Pigs invasion fails. The CIA thoroughly analyses the photograph (which depicts a Caucasian man and a woman of color making love) and the tape (which has been edited) that had been dropped off anonymously at Wilson's house early in the movie. From clues such as the brand of the ceiling fan, the church bells outside, and the sounds on the tape, they deduce that the photograph might have been taken in Leopoldville, Congo. Wilson goes to the Congo, finds the room, and realizes that the photograph and tape are of his son Edward, Jr. as shown by the ship in a glass watch casing which is sitting on the nightstand of the room; it was blurred in the photo, and the one object the CIA team could not recognize. Ulysses has apparently been awaiting Wilson's arrival. He plays an unedited recording, which reveals that Edward, Jr. repeated the classified information he heard from his father to his lover, a spy. It is that information that led to the Cubans' and Soviets' knowledge regarding the CIA landing at the Bay of Pigs. Ulysses reveals that the woman is a Soviet spy who has truly fallen in love with Edward, Jr. Ulysses encourages Wilson to protect his son by spying for the Soviets in return. Wilson is non-committal; he confronts his son, who says that he is in love with the woman and plans to marry her. Wilson tells him she is a spy, but his son won't believe it.
Wilson exposes Valentin as a Soviet spy after finding evidence in the binding of the book Ulysses: a passport and an escape plan. This also exposes Arch Cummings as a co-conspirator, since in an earlier scene, Cummings gave the book to Valentin as a seemingly benign, clever gift playing on Valentin's knowledge of Ulysses, the Soviet spy. Arch Cummings has now fled to the USSR. After this, Wilson declines to run counter-intelligence for the Soviets. Ulysses notes of Wilson's son's fiancée: "neither of us can be sure about her", and asks whether "you want her to be part of your family". Edward does not respond. Ulysses makes reference to a future favor, having placed Edwards in a compromising position. Afterwards, Ulysses' aide asks for change to purchase a souvenir for his daughter. Wilson asks how much it is, and upon hearing it is a dollar, hands him a one dollar note saying that a cardinal rule of democracy is generosity. This appears to refer to a scene at the very beginning of the film, where a young boy on a bus asks Wilson for change for a dollar -- when Wilson gets back to his office, he matches the serial number on the bill to a CIA asset codenamed "CARDINAL". In retrospect, Wilson seems to be paying a favour in advance.
Edward, Jr.'s fiancée boards a small plane, and in mid-flight, she is thrown out of the plane by the co-pilot. When she doesn't show up at the wedding ceremony, Wilson informs his son. Edward Jr. tearfully asks if he had anything to do with the death, to which Wilson says no. Edward Jr. reveals that his fiancée was pregnant; the news shocks and saddens Wilson.
Upon returning home, Edward finally reads his father Thomas's suicide note. His father's words reveal that he had betrayed his country. He had left words of love for his wife and son Edward, particularly urging his son to be a good man and live a life of decency and truth.
The film ends with Allen's resignation as CIA director under a cloud of financial improprieties, and Edward entering his new office, a special wing built at CIA headquarters where he will be the first head of counter-intelligence, working for his fellow Skull and Bones classmate, Hayes (loosely based on Richard Helms), who will be the new CIA director.
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