Robert De Niro made a confident directorial debut in 1993 with the intimate family drama A Bronx Tale. Thirteen years on, his second stint at the helm deals with an altogether bigger 'family': that cuddly collection of information-gatherers now known as the CIA.

De Niro teams up with writer Eric Roth (who won an Oscar for Forrest Gump, though his work on The Insider and Munich has more relevance here) to switch back-and-forth between America's entry into WWII and the events surrounding the globe-threatening Bay Of Pigs fiasco in Cuba.

Unsurprisingly, it’s a serious business, channelled through Edward Wilson, a young patriot played with stony-faced intensity by Matt Damon.

In 1939, Edward is quietly studying English at Yale while dating a lovely deaf girl (Blanchard) when he is invited to join the Skull and Bones society, a secretive brotherhood for the rich and well-connected. (The institution actually exists, with the Bush family as, um, notable alumni.)

Once initiated, Edward wastes no time in exposing his tutor (Gambon) as a Nazi sympathiser, impregnating Clover (Jolie) – the sister of a fellow ‘Boneman’ - and, on his shotgun-wedding day, enlisting for the espionage effort in Europe led by old warhorse General Sullivan (De Niro).

The next six years are spent mired in war-winning skulduggery with the Office of Strategic Services in London and Berlin. With Hitler no more, Edward and the counter-intelligence chaps turn their attention to Russia and a new kind of war.

But the colder war is back home, where his sham marriage to Clover has a demoralising effect on their son Edward Jr (Eddie Redmayne). The boy yearns to be part of Edward’s world.

It’s a dangerous place where truth and trust are unaffordable luxuries, full of paranoia, fatal indiscretions, double-crosses and red herrings. And there is always, always a fall guy.

De Niro complements his perfectionist’s eye for historical detail by picking a fine team to play the spy game.

On the company’s side, we have Alec Baldwin’s FBI head-hunter, William Hurt’s CIA chief, British spook Billy Crudup, John Turturro as Wilson’s unflinching right-hand man, and Lee Pace – a face to watch after Infamous and the sadly axed TV cult Wonderfalls - as Edward’s agency rival.

Oleg Stefan and John Sessions keep up to speed as, respectively, a KGB bloodhound and a dodgy defector, while De Niro also manages to coax his old mucker Joe Pesci out of retirement for a blink-and-miss cameo.

The Good Shepherd asks some searching questions on the nature of patriotism, loyalty and personal sacrifice. What exactly is the greater good? And how far should we go to achieve it?

Ostensibly, Edward is our guide through this moral maze, but for all his brooding, we never really discover what makes him tick. It leaves an unfilled emotional hole in the story.

Since his movie still manages to grip for nigh on three hours, De Niro must be a pretty good shepherd himself... even if his main character is a bit of a lost sheep.

Elliott Noble