Juxtrip Review of The Shepherd

The Shepherd (I) (2008 Video)

Interesting stylized film that definitely could have been much better.

[6/10 · 11 April 2009]

Jean-Claude plays a tired, sad looking character which works well for this movie; he's been through the death of his daughter due to drugs and is out for revenge on the suppliers as a border patrol agent. The film is quite stylish, with parts bordering on a spaghetti-western style with both the cinematography and music. The style of the film is much more interesting than the story, as are some of the fight scenes and I was pleased to see that most of them were filmed clearly (wide shots) so you can actually see what is happening (unlike some bigger budget films, like the recent Batman, that show fights in close-up so you can't really tell what's going on). The only bad side to the fighting is that the best bad-guy martial artist at the end has much better kicks than Jean-Claude which is not what you would expect if you've seen many of Jean-Claude's films. Overall an interesting stylized film that definitely could have been much better but was still entertaining.