One way to think about the last few days - the deaths of Gerry Ford, Saddam Hussein and James Brown - is to imagine them like the final half-hour of The Godfather, with the Bush Family settling all scores. Ford for some internecine slight at the convention in 76, Saddam for not taking orders, James Brown for making drunk driving look so much cooler than when a preppie does it.
It's all connected. How many guys worked with Gerry Ford and Saddam Hussein? Only Bush button man Donald Rumsfeld. Eerie. Plus Rumsfeld tortures prisoners and James Brown served time and recorded "Please, Please, Please."
Haha! Your government tortures people. In your name.
Where was I?
Oh, right, The Godfather.
But you don't have to imagine what the Bush Family version of The Godfather would look like. If you have six or seven hours you can watch The Good Shepherd.
The Good Shepherd is the story of the first thirty years of the CIA, told in real time. People are complaining that it lacks thrills, and that's certainly true - it makes 1900 look like Die Hard - but its real problem is that it's a smart idea without the self-confidence to be even a little funny.
Here's the idea: What the mob is to Sicilians, the CIA is to WASPs. It's blood and bloodletting and honor and family and profit and revenge and dads telling moms, "Never ask me about work." And the history is true, too. Or true enough. America needed a spy agency, and decided to staff it entirely with lockjawed twits who knocked up each other's sisters at Yale.
(In the immortal words of David Feldman, "You know why Harvard guys took over comedy? Because after Vietnam they weren't allowed to (foul)-up foreign policy.")
Is that enough of an idea for an eight hour movie? Maybe, but not this one. Because this one refuses to admit that a dining club that kills people is comical.
And horrifying.
The Good Shepherd is just somber. Which happens a lot when people who aren't WASPs make movies about WASPs. They notice that Protestants are cold.
Robert De Niro has taken a semi-promising observation - that America's recent history has been largely screwed up by guys named Chip -- and turned it into Smiley's People meets Ordinary People.
(He's also made the stylistic decision that Matt Damon can age 30 years by wearing a hat and Angelina Jolie can age 30 years by, uh, nothing.)
But what makes The Good Shepherd not just a dull movie, but actually dangerous and stupid, is what it says about the Bay of Pigs.
What little dramatic tension there is in The Good Shepherd comes from the premise that the Bay of Pigs landings were ruined by a (SPOILER ALERT) leak. The first and last fifteen hours of the movie involve Damon - older and hat-wearing - looking for the traitor who gave away the time and place of the invasion.
This isn't just tired for a spy movie; it's pernicious for a movie about politics. Because it suggests that invading Cuba could have worked, would have worked, if America hadn't been stabbed in the back.
In other words, foreigners like it when we attack them - they greet us with, you know, flowers - unless some snoop shoots his mouth off.
I believe that Robert De Niro, Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie and Eric Roth - the film's credited screenwriter - are nice liberals. But they've made a movie that hinges on the same thesis as Operation Iraqi Freedom: We win except when betrayed.
Was attacking Cuba right or wrong? The film's too grown up to take a position. Which leaves, what? When you strip it down, if it's not against people like the Bushes for believing in American exceptionalism, it's against them out of simple reverse snobbery.
The Bay of Pigs didn't fail because of anything that was overheard by anyone in the bathtub (SPOILER ALERT: NOT ANGELINA JOLIE); it failed because the CIA believed the Cuban people would rise up in support of being bombed and invaded and they didn't.
Because no one does. Not in Cuba. Not in Afghanistan. Not in Iraq.
Because foreigners are shortsighted like that. They don't like it when you kill them, even if it will do them a world of good.
And even if, like Donald Rumsfeld, you only got into Princeton.
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On another subject entirely, if you like Studio 60, and dialogue where one character name-drops a slightly wrong reference to something classy and another corrects it, don't miss the premiere of Dirt.
"The whole thing happens because the guy dips a cookie in some tea."
"It's not just any cookie. It's a Madeleine."
Your move, Sorkin.