The Good Shepherd (2006) on Netflix
R20062h 47mDramaHistoryThriller
Edward Wilson, a Yale poetry student, joins the Skull and Bones society and is recruited into a new foreign intelligence service. His marriage to Margaret frays as the work takes over.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.7/10113,341 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes56%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1939 Edward Wilson writes poetry at Yale and is invited into the Skull and Bones society, where he tells its leaders that as a boy he found a suicide note from his father, Admiral Thomas Wilson, and never read it. FBI agent Sam Murach asks him to look into his thesis advisor, Dr. Fredericks, who leaves his post over what Edward uncovers. He dates Laura, a deaf classmate, but marries Margaret "Clover" Russell after she becomes pregnant. General Bill Sullivan brings him into a new foreign intelligence service; Edward works counterespionage in wartime London and returns to Washington after the war, where Margaret and their son wait and the agency takes shape around him.
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Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Good Shepherd (2006)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Director Francis Ford Coppola, who originally developed the screenplay, left the project because he said he could not relate to characters who lacked emotion; his replacement, Wayne Wang, then lost the job himself when a management shake-up at Columbia ended his involvement mid-scouting.
- Director John Frankenheimer died during pre-production in 2002; producer Jane Rosenthal said the film had already been Robert De Niro's pet project for nine years by that point, slowed by difficulty getting made before the September 11 attacks.
- Leonardo DiCaprio originally had a deal to play Edward Wilson, but he had to back out over a scheduling conflict with The Departed, and financier Graham King's backers then left the project entirely.
- Matt Damon initially turned down the lead role because he was booked to shoot Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!, and only signed on after Soderbergh agreed to delay that production.
- Many sets were built under production designer Jeannine Oppewall's direction, including a Skull and Bones headquarters and the Berlin set, both at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, while the interiors of the CIA were built in the Brooklyn Armory, a large building constructed in 1901 for the United States Cavalry.
- Because protagonist Edward Wilson had once aspired to be a poet, production designer Jeannine Oppewall filled the sets with symbolism, using mirrors for the CIA's duplicity, full-rigged ships to represent the state, and eagles deployed ironically during interrogation scenes.
