The Good Shepherd

I read somewhere that someone described this as "the best spy movie ever!" My response was, "Really?" It's not that I didn't think The Good Shepherd was a good movie -- I thought it was quite good, but I certainly wouldn't say "best spy movie ever." It's an intriquing look at secret organizations and the relationships between fathers and sons, but perhaps my definition of "spy movie" just includes more on-screen action.
This is the Yahoo.com summary:

Edward Wilson understands the value of secrecy--discretion and commitment to honor have been embedded in him since childhood. As an eager, optimistic student at Yale, he is recruited to join the secret society Skull and Bones, a brotherhood and breeding ground for future world leaders. Wilson's acute mind, spotless reputation and sincere belief in American values render him a prime candidate for a career in intelligence, and he is soon recruited to work for the OSS (the precursor to the CIA) during WWII. As one of the covert founders of the CIA, working in the heart of an organization where duplicity is required and nothing is taken at face value, Edward's idealism is steadily eroded by a growing suspicious nature, reflective of a world settling into the long paranoia of the Cold War. As his methods are adopted as standard operating procedure, Wilson develops into one of the Agency's veteran operatives, all the while combating his KGB counterpart. However, his steely dedication to his country comes at an ever-increasing price. Not even his wife Clover or his beloved son can divert Wilson from a path that will force him to sacrifice everything in pursuit of this job.

The Good Shepherd is the second film that Robert De Niro has directed (he also plays a small role) and he does a rather good show of it -- particularly whenever things were visually darker, such as scenes dealing with the Skull & Bones group or World War II. It was more cinematically appealing for a dark subject, perhaps, in my mind. Matt Damon makes a fantastic character who has ulterior motives (there's always some hidden intelligence lurking behind his eyes, it seems, in every one of his movies... except maybe Dogma... and Stuck on You). He gives the appearence of being as emotional as a stone in his work and how this plays out in all aspects of his life is fascinating. Angelina Jolie was rather wasted in this role... her vibrant sexuality at her introduction is great, but then she's relegated to the role of the abandoned wife who "lives with a ghost" and is expected to accept that. When she finally explodes in the middle of a Skull and Bones meeting, she creates a wonderfully horrifying scene but that doesn't seem quite enough for her larger-than-life personality. William Hurt, Alec Baldwin and particularly Michael Gambon are all notable for their performances here.
I ultimately walked away with the feeling that it wasn't quite enough. Here's the final paragraph of the NY Times review which rather summarizes the feeling of dissatisfaction:

Who rules the drones in “The Good Shepherd”? Who is IT? The president, the people, American mining and banana companies, the ghosts of fathers past, the agency itself? It’s hard to know, though now the C.I.A. answers to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. These are hard questions, but they are also too big, too complex and perhaps too painful for even this ambitious (2 hours, 37 minutes) project, which can only elude and insinuate, not enlighten and inform. Although the film seems true in broad outline and scrupulous detail, and the postwar Berlin rubble looks as real as the documentary footage of Fidel Castro slipped between the lightly fictionalized intrigue, there is something ungraspable and unknowable about this world, even if it is also one we ourselves have helped create.

Nevertheless, it was an ambitious movie and Matt Damon gives an excellent performance. It's worth the viewing for that alone.