The Good Shepherd shows the early history of the CIA and is viewed through the eyes of one man's life.

This espionage drama stays on track the way movies used to be without relying on flash.

The acting is superb all the way through and it takes a little patience--but if you're willing to invest your brain for a bit, you'll be very happy with the results.

Told mainly in flashbacks, The Good Shepherd is the story of the birth of the CIA.

Filled with wooden performances that give it a rather cold feeling, it has the pace of a slow thriller, and is a little too long for my taste.

Still, DeNiro does a great job in the director's chair of showing us just how difficult it is to be a spy.

The Good Shepherd is a methodical, glum, and unemotional fictionalized look at the birth of the CIA.

Using the life of one secret agent, the film summarizes more than 20 years of history and the toll the job takes on one man's family.

This is a spy movie that keeps you on the edge of your brain, as you track this secret patriot through a paranoid world of shaky identity, wondering as much as he does who to trust.