"The Good Shepherd" is actually pretty good Posted by Daniel McCarthy at December 24, 2006 02:31 AM
To my surprise, the movie is not the glorification of CIA skulduggery that the previews had led me to expect. As a film, it's well-made and rewards attentive viewing. But it's particularly interesting thematically, especially for moviegoers of a libertarian bent.
Slight spoilers follow...
The best scene in the movie is when the CIA picks up a Russian defector who claims to be another Russian defector whom they've already picked up. So the agents waterboard him, pound him into hamburger, and finally fry his mind with LSD -- all tactics that appear to be about as common now as during the film's Cold War era. Under the drug's influence, the Russian proceeds to tell the Americans the whole truth, a truth that our intelligence agencies couldn't (or didn't want to) figure out for about forty years but that Ludwig von Mises knew before the Cold War began.