by MATTHEW HAYS

Why bother with subtlety when you can inform your audience beforehand that you want your film to be soaked in irony? Such appears to be the plan when screenwriter Eric Roth and consummate actor and occasional director Robert De Niro decided to use the word “good” in the title of their latest. They were, after all, making a movie about the birth of the CIA.

The intentions were good, you see, but things went terribly wrong somewhere along the line. That’s the premise of The Good Shepherd, a competently handled, over-long look at the beginnings of the CIA as told through the eyes of one agent, played by Matt Damon. It’s the story arc that’s now been factored into all of the screenwriting computer software programs at the studios: young innocent has best of intentions, but is dragged into large, corrupting vortex; values begin to get flushed down toilet, one by one; moral ambiguity ensues. Throw in one or two hot lady friends for hero-cum-anti-hero to shag. Though not obligatory, potential scene has protagonist looking into the mirror, wondering how everything he stood for has gone to hell in a bucket.

Cynicism aside, there are some okay moments in The Good

Shepherd. The inner workings of the CIA are seen as complex and troubling, and the gaggle of strange characters is played by a who’s-who of America’s best character actors, Wiliam Hurt, Joe Pesci and Timothy Hutton among them (one doesn’t neglect to return Mr. De Niro’s phone calls).

Damon ends up in a loveless marriage with Angelina Jolie, after he knocks her up. But he does the task required of him, reflecting America’s goodwill gone sour after too many backroom deals with various devils.

He’s seen as a character scarred by his father’s suicide, something that made me recall a far better film about conspiracies, spies, strained family relations and rancid American foreign policy. John Schlesinger said so much—and so much better—in Marathon Man (1976), an infinitely more suspenseful and entertaining movie. The Good

Shepherd isn’t bad, but honestly, given the rich landscape of American espionage they had to cull from, this entry is far too predictable and not nearly exciting enough.

The Good Shepherd opens Friday, Dec. 22

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