Disclaimer: I was a couple beers in when I watched this movie, and didn’t pay very close attention. Still, I’m pretty sure it made no sense.
Edward Wilson aka “Mother” (Matt Damon) is one of the original CIA agents. We first see Edward playing Buttercup in HMS Pinafore in drag with the Yale Whiffenpoofs. He’s a poetry major and Skull & Bones member, who, for whatever reason is recruited as a spy (this reminds me of the opening scenes of Team America: ‘What we need is a really, really great Actor!’). Then, there’s a party and Edward (despite being in love with this deaf woman) has a quick, perfunctory poke with a friend’s sister, Clover (inexplicably played by Angelina Jolie), resulting in her pregnancy and a really resentful marriage. Then, Edward is off to England and Germany and wherever to do spy-y things. He is really suited for spying because, despite the dramatics we briefly viewed in the initial scenes of the movie, he is a stone-faced automaton throughout, who reveals nothing and possibly feels nothing. WWII ends, the Cold War begins, CIA is formed, Edward interacts with a myriad of characters who all seemed indistinguishable to me (Alec Baldwin, William Hurt, a Russian dude who looks just like Alec Baldwin, a couple more Russian dudes, and I think Robert DeNiro is in there somewhere, too), and Angelina Jolie despairs that she can’t ever get Edward’s attention (why the hell would a rich, well-connected, gorgeous woman have to trick somebody she barely knows into marrying her? This is yet another aspect of this movie that makes no sense).
And then somehow Edward’s son who he loves more than anything ends up in Congo, bedding down with a spy for the other team. This is entirely unexplained, but basically, it is what thwarted the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Russian dude to Edward: ‘Now you will have to choose which you love more: your son, or your country.’ Yes, this was actually a line of actual dialogue in the actual movie. For the preview, I suppose, and for those viewers who are stupider than posts. And that’s not at all the only example of such ham-fisted writing. And then, on top of that, Edward doesn’t actually have to choose between his son and his country at all!
Jeez, this was a stupid movie, I’m pretty sure.
