The Good Shepherd (2004)

Simply A Masterpiece

Instant Favorite.

Fantastic!

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This movie has a glacial pace. Nothing much happens until the final few minutes of the film for a chase.The movie is grim, bleak, gritty, dirty, shopworn, colourless. The protagonists are not very appealing. Even Christian Slater plays a sort of car salesman type personality who gradually grows some backbone.The movie depicts the tedium, hierarchy and obsession with ecclesiastical trivia that makes up a priest's life. The church is corrupt, concerned only with its image.Everybody in the movie would have been better off without the church. Their fascination with it derailed their lives.Molly Parker plays the lead female. She reminds me a bit of Olive Oyl with her unnaturally lanky body.Nancy Beatty plays a sort of Dickensian arch villain. She is about the only colourful character in the film.

For a non-Canadian viewer,the film might seem weird .Their priests do not look like those of their countries,or maybe this is the movie which makes them look like more like yuppies than men of God.It takes a lot of imagination to believe that Christian Slater,Stephen Rea and even poor Von Flores are clergymen.The movie is actually a whodunit where Slater -who began his career in a monastery (remember "the name of the rose"?)puts on his little act of Hercule Poirot without a mustache .Best performance ,IMHO,comes from Nancy Beatty as the sinister Mrs Gallagher:she particularly shines in the scene where she blames the clergy for their life in luxury.Like this ...try this.....Primal fear (Gregory Hoblit) -much better than "shepherd"!-

(There are Spoilers) When the very beloved and respected Father Andrews,Von Flores, is found by Mrs. Lucy Gallagher (Nancy Betty), his church's landlady, at the scene of young Eric Halloran,James Dallas Smith,murder he instead of asking for a lawyer asks for his fellow priest Father Daniel Clemens, Christian Slater,to talk,or confess,to.Adamantly denying any guilt in Eric's death Father Andrews still won't tell Father Daniel the possible reasons behind Eric's murder! It seems that Father Andrews has a strong suspicion who killed Eric but can't reveal it either to the police or Father Daniel. The killer confessed his about to commit crime to Father Andrews during confession!Believing Father Andrews story Father Daniel goes so far as getting his former girlfriend, before he joined the priesthood, WPPI TV news reporter Madelline Finney, Molly Parker, to interview, in jail, Father Andrew and see what she can get out of him. It turns out, Finney finds out, that Eric was a street hustler who was shaking down his customers for cash and that possibly Father Andrews was one of them! It gets even more interesting when Father Daniel checking Father Andrews mail finds that he was in contact with the gay Catholic group called "Equality"! If this became public to his superiors in the church that would have had Father Andrews defrocked and booted out of his parish St. Dominic.As things start to tighten around the besieged Father Andrew's neck he's suddenly found hanged in the prison shower! This sets off alarms with Father Daniel in that it's very obvious to him that Father Andrews didn't kill himself. A strongly religious man like Father Andrews who was willing to spend the rest of his life behind bars by not breaking the church's voes of confession will never kill himself, a mortal sin, and be damned for all eternity!The movie has Father Daniel as well as reporter Finney uncover a number of clues to just what was the relationship between the two deceased Father Andrews and Eric Halloran. Like Father Daniel suspected someone whom Father Andrews took into his confidence,during confession, murdered Eric in that he was blackmailing him.Despite keeping quite Father Andrews was himself murdered by Eric's killer in fear that he may break under the pressure of police interrogation and spill the beans on him as well! The church wanting to keep the whole murderous affair behind it had Father Daniel kicked out for his bulldog-like insubordination in his trying to find Father Andrews killer. Since he refused to play along with the theory that it all was an affair between two men that, when exposed, went terribly wrong!It's then that the movie starts to backtrack in a number of clues that both the police and Father Daniel overlooked.***SPOILERS*** These clues point directly to Mrs. Gallagher who rented the parish to the church that Father Andrews was the pastor of! It was Mrs. Gallagher's un-Catholic like ways of doing business with the people, mostly teenagers runaways and drug addicts, of the St. Dominic Parish that eventually set the stage not only for the murder of Eric Hallaron and Father Andrews but herself as well!Somewhat predictable ending with the killer suddenly coming out of the shadows as his identity, which was not that much of a surprise, was about to be exposed. One thing you have to say in the killers favor is that he unwittingly prevented Father Daniel from betraying the late Father Andrews in him breaking his voes of confession. Even though at the time Father Andrews had absolutely no idea that he was breaking them!

Webb's film concerning a priest (Slater) who believes in a young priest who is accused of murder and claims he is innocent. Molly Parker is good as his former love interest/journalist who helps him out. The film is not amazing, it was actually quite lame in some of its cinematic moments, and felt so B-movie-ish. It was entertaining at times, but just too slow and didn't have the directorial flare that a good B movie should have or the quality of an A-movie. This was nowhere near as good as stuff like The Deal (also starring Slater) or even End Game (starring Cuba GOoding Jr.)... the best in this kind of genre is THe Sentinel which was a very good film despite it having a TV-movie like feel to it. THe Confessor is not the worst film, but its a bit worse than your average film so skip it unless you have a lot of time on your hands. IMDb Rating: 5.0, my rating: 6/10