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entertaining u newspaper: your weekly guide to entertainment
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Rocky Balboa
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Seen, Heard, Noted & Quoted
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by rick grant rickgrant01@comcast.net
B+ Rated R 160 min
In regard to Robert De Niro’s direction of this film, there are two factors that viewers need to be aware of going into the theater. First, De Niro purposely uses slow pacing as a cinematic tool to bring out the stark realism of Eric Roth’s well researched original screenplay. Second, the scenario jumps around in time form 1945 to 1961, which can be confusing.
The story is really a detailed biopic of Edward Wilson’s (Matt Damon) rise to power co-creating the CIA after WWII, which came at a heavy cost—his marriage to Margaret Russell (Angelina Jolie). Clearly, Damon’s characterization of Wilson is Oscar-worthy. Damon’s icy stare of determination and dedication is chilling as he maneuvers himself into a top position in the emerging Agency. When Wilson entered a room, he carried himself as a man of importance, rarely saying anything, yet provoking others to speculate as to his VIP status.
Indeed, one could say Wilson was the archetypal stuffed-suit bureaucrat with a brilliant analytical mind. His ability to remember volumes of intelligence was perfect for his job overseeing the early intelligence service. The key to Wilson’s rise to power was his association with Yale’s secret society, Skull & Bones. Trust among these Yale S&B members was never questioned. Yet as time went on, Wilson became paranoid based on all the secrets he kept bottled up inside and his workaholic personality.
De Niro’s plodding pacing serves to underscore Wilson’s deeply repressed psyche, as his secrets corrupt his mind like a growing brain tumor. Roth’s screenplay shows how secret societies like S&B form special interest groups who circumvent the Constitution by becoming closed shops of power, operating in secrecy to push their own agendas.
In the early 1960s the CIA and the FBI, under the tyrannical leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, wielded absolute power. When JFK was elected, he vowed to greatly reduce the CIA’s power base and rein in Hoover. One branch of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists speculate that JFK was murdered by black operatives of the CIA and FBI to protect their autonomy. Nonetheless, Kennedy’s campaign to clean up the CIA and FBI was only partially successful. Then he was dead and business as usual continued at the Agency and FBI to skirt the Constitution, which Roth’s script exposes.
A central theme of the movie is the CIA’s and Kennedy’s colossal screw up, the Bay of Pigs—a poorly planned, funded, and executed invasion of Cuba by anti-Castro Cuban forces supported by the CIA. The coup de grace to the ill-fated mission was not providing the invasion force close air support. The ragtag Anti-Castro army was easily defeated and the CIA was humiliated. Roth’s script shows that the Bay of Pigs defeat gave Castro his juiciest propaganda victory. The CIA operatives who bungled this mission began to cover their asses and distance themselves from the operation. An Agency-wide cover-up ensued. Wilson was secure in his job, as the CIA took over its new headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Wilson had weathered many storms to emerge unscathed by scandal.
In a flashback, Wilson had made a name for himself by exposing a Yale professor (Michael Gambon) with Nazi connections to an FBI agent played by Alec Baldwin. This act of betrayal demonstrated his patriotism and willingness to back stab his way to the top. Ironically, later Wilson learns that the Nazi professor is a double agent working for the CIA. Yes, in this world Wilson learned he couldn’t trust anyone. While still in Yale, Wilson got the sister of one of his S&B’s colleagues pregnant, Margaret Russell. So he did the right thing and married her. It was a loveless union and Wilson was away in Europe for the first six years of their marriage. His only true love was a deaf girl with whom he parted ways to pursue his demanding career as a rising CIA power broker. His wife had resigned herself to living alone and keeping up appearances for the sake of her high social position.
De Niro’s cinematic method creates an old-fashioned intrigue movie that is well worth viewing, so have patience with his slow rhythm. It does require the viewer’s full attention to stay with the vacillating time frames and flashbacks. Matt Damon draws the viewer into his dark world of quiet discipline and power with a riveting performance.
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