Many of the films in this series concern the doings of the Central Intelligence Agency, perhaps the most best known of all the components of the intelligence community, even if it seems an afterthought as compared to the much larger, much better funded National Security Agency. In typical film representations, CIA agents are either evil (Above the Law, Who’ll Stop the Rain), implicated in very ugly double dealings (Marathon Man, Apocalypse Now), doing things they ought not to be doing (All the President’s Men, Missing), or staffed by agents inclined, whenever given the chance, to go rogue (The Bourne Identity, Charlie Wilson’s War).
But in reality, a CIA post is a desk job punctuated by gunfire. Thus the lesson of the 2006 film The Good Shepherd, directed by Robert De Niro, who appears as CIA founding director Bill Sullivan. (The role seems to be based on William Joseph Donovan, who had no “official” role in the agency, but who was certainly influential in its founding and organization.) The film centers on a character played by Matt Damon, whom we have seen twice before in this series. Edward Wilson is a perfect Cold Warrior. A Skull and Bones type recruited into the Office of Strategic Services, he graduates to first-generation CIA agent after betraying his mentor, then plays cat and mouse across the globe with a Soviet agent code-named Ulysses (and played with sophistication and humor by Ukrainian actor Oleg Shtefanko). Wilson is amoral, almost an automaton, seemingly incapable of any connection to his wife (well played by Angelina Jolie) and son (Eddie Redmayne). Indeed, he comes to life, it seems, only when he is betraying someone he loves—as happens many times.
Is he evil? We need a Hannah Arendt to answer the question, and if he’s not the worst of the bunch—that honor goes to William Hurt’s smoothly sinister Philip Allen (“Why is it that people like us choose to serve for nickels a day in a profession that makes us constantly look over our shoulder to see who is watching us?”)—then Wilson is the most banal. A friendly warning: if you see him kneel to tie his shoelace, run.
