Life's a Riot with Spy vs. Spy

Do you harbor paranoid fantasies about everyone around you? Do you have an unnatural love of secrecy? Do you mentally calculate every possibility, no matter how absurd? Do you nurture an internal, unshakable belief in something which has no basis in reality? Do you obsess about controlling your surroundings? Are you withdrawn to the point of being a sociopath?

If you're like me, you probably try to hide these character flaws. But in the world of Cold War espionage as portrayed in The Good Shepard, these are survival skills. I often had secret agent fantasies as a boy, fueled by popular culture and film. And the idea still has a certain dangerous, edgy appeal. But Matt Damon's stoic, somber demeanor in the film reminds me too much of what I have been like during periods of my life. The traits that make a person a successful spy seem to be woefully at odds with the traits that make a person happy and fulfilled. I suppose there are plenty of creepy "spy personalities" lurking in the world today. It's probably a good thing that I'm not one of them. :-)

The problem with the film wasn't that it was too glamorous, nor too depressing, it was that it was not enough of either. Having been raised on the Iran-Contra hearings, then later exploring the whole history of the CIA, I know that the American intelligence community has had ridiculous highs and abysmal lows. The film is too earnest: one critic said it was "the Godfather of Spy Movies." Apt enough, I suppose. After all, it was directed by Robert DeNiro and executive produced by Francis Coppola. Ultimately, though, it was too fictionalized and procedural to be a character study, too melodramatic to be a history, and too polished and clean to be anything other than a Hollywood kiss-and-tell. Check out this video instead.