Why The Good shepherd is a Bad Movie

Nate poses a good question - what makes The Good shepherd a bad movie? The politically correct answer is that if you enjoyed it, you enjoyed it, and that's all that really matters. As a consumer product, which movies are, this is true. And for movies in general, people have different tastes and some people will enjoy movies that others don't. But I'm not a fan of political correctness and I have developed a point of view about filmmaking perhaps not consistent with the layperson. This is what 7 semesters of film school hath bought:

Point 1: Taste is objective. That means there is such thing as good and bad taste - and hence good and bad movies.

Point 2: As a human being, I enjoy many things that are in bad taste and often don't enjoy things that are in good taste.

My point here is that enjoyment does not equal good. To illustrate:

I enjoy the movie Commando, but it is not a good movie.
I enjoy the movie Predator, and it is a good movie.
I do not enjoy The Deer Hunter, but it is a good movie.
I do not enjoy Garden State and it is not a good movie.

Okay. That's a fairly simple round up. The second issue is what makes a movie well-directed vs. well-written. This is certainly a tough, but not impossible, distinction because - at least under the autuer theory - writing is simply one component of a directors vision, others of which are casting, performance, production design, camera choices, and editing choices.

BUT, on a basic nuts and bolts level, writing=characters+structure+dialog. Directing = casting+performance+camera choices. There are other elements such as pacing, locations, production design, and sound, all of which are huge and technically fall under directing...but for the sake of the Good shepherd, we'll try to keep it simple (and I'm only going from memory of the film, which I've seen once).

From a writing perspective, the Good shepherd had some pretty huge structural holes - which are more glaring in spy thrillers than say, a comedy where it doesn't matter as much. But how in the hell did Matt Damon's son end up in Africa or wherever the fuck he was with his "wife." Hunh? All of a sudden this kid shows up giving key secrets away to some girl when the last time we saw him he was in college. It made no sense whatsoever. And why did Damon fly all the way there for his wedding only to have the girl killed? I understand he did it for emotion and tension (what's going to happen?), but the structural stupidity had me scratching my head. Also, what was the point of Matt Damon's wife? It was as if she were tossed in under the mad lib blank: Obstacle #1: Girl gets pregnant. This is a problem with character. Now, it wasn't all bad - some characters were good/decent and the structure wasn't a total mess, and the dialog was fine...but you can't compensate for the few bad choices because no really bold or good choices were made, they failed to examine Damon's psychological complexity, the flashing forward and back was pretty blah, and there just wasn't anything to cheer about writing-wise. So the bad writing in the Good shepherd amounts to : bad structure + a few bad characters + mediocre dialog = bad.

Now the Damon wife topic is a good segway into the directorial failures - casting Angela Jolie? Are you kidding me? What guy in the world wouldn't be home every night shagging the living shit out of Angela Jolie? Come on. Does anyone become this morally complicated, dark human being when you've married into total wealth and managed to snag the hottest girl on the block. No. You thank your lucky stars, take a plush board room job, and have lots and lots of children. No actress in the world could've done much with the part as written. It was crap. But to compound the mistake, you hire the hottest, sexiest actress around to play the women he's trying to stay away from? Come on. That's bad casting.

Now onto performance. It's interesting because on the top level, you're getting great actors, you don't really need to worry about what beginning directors can't always get - and that's believable performances. It is one reason why student films are so poor because we can't get good actors in them. So at this high level, of course, you're going to get pretty good performances. But what you have to look at is what are you getting out of the talent you've got. Check Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Creeeeepy. That's a performance. That's Minghella. See Baldwin in The Departed. That's a performance. Scorcese. Check William Hurt in a History of Violence. None of these guys are playing their "A" game. They are Kobe scoring 18 and dishing 5 assists. Iverson scoring 20 with 4 assists. They aren't up to speed. The best performances of the movie, I thought, were DeNiro and Billy Crudup - BUT a big thing about those parts - great characters...well written characters. So all this stuff ties together, but nonetheless, they can be broken into component parts.

And so lastly - at least on my above list - is camera choice. (position, lens, and format) DeNiro doesn't make an interesting camera choice in the entire movie. It is again, competent. I mean, how can you make a huge Hollywood movie and make incompetent choices (although Coppola famously did in the Godfather and they had to compensate with sound in some scenes...which ironically contributed to its brilliance). But merely making competent choices at this level, I believe, is not enough. One needs to make strong, decisive choices (see Clint) or bold creative choices (see Children of Men). For example - the silhouettes of Clint in Million Dollar Baby in the boxing ring. Unbelievably simple, crisp, decisive, and powerful. Or Children of Men, just watch the opening shot of the movie or the car chase scene, with really long single takes capturing action sequences. Bold.

Which brings up an interesting movie - Miami Vice (those who knew me would probably predicted I'd figure a way to work it in). Miami Vice, to me, was neither bold nor strong and decisive, but rather experimental in the HD shooting mixed with Michael Mann's own camera operating style. This is one reason why many people dislike the film...because experimental takes a certain mindset to enjoy and tends to take upon a difficult quality, generally throwing more power to the audience to get some meaning from the movie, rather than washing over you with images and sound and story as most Hollywood movies tend to do. Experimental filmmaking tends toward reevaluation and makes you either never want to hear, speak, or talk about a movie again, or perhaps, if something touched you - to see it again and again and discover something new.

Anyhow, that's the short analysis (wink) off the top of my head of the Good shepherd. Attack away, ye readers....