The Recruit Movie Review:


What happens when you blend a hot rising star in Hollywood with a grizzled veteran actor in a spies and espionage drama? Uh, Spy-Game? Well almost.

This time it’s rising star Colin Farrell who is recruited by Hollywood veteran Al Pacino. Farrell plays John Clayton, a crack computer programmer who is about to make it big when CIA recruiter Walter Burke (Pacino) dangles a secret to Farrell’s father in his face. To learn more about his “pop”, Clayton would have to join the CIA.

Clayton leaves his financially secure career behind and qualifies for training at the CIA’s “boot-camp” known fondly as “The Farm”. During training, Clayton becomes infatuated with a female recruit named Layla (Bridget Monynahan). They develop a relationship and Burke begins to use it against his young protégé. Eventually Clayton’s feelings for Layla get in the way of a mission and Clayton washes out of the Farm.

A week later, Clayton is visited by Burke who offers him a way back into the good graces of the CIA. His mission is to stop a mole with CIA headquarters. The mole is Layla. How will Clayton deal with his new assignment? Can he keep his affections in check long enough to take his beloved down? Furthermore is Layla really a mole?

“The Recruit” is a successful thriller until it seems to cannibalize itself with obvious clichés and an offensive publicity campaign.

For those of us who saw the first full trailer of this film, we know everything going in and it’s very hard to maintain tension when we know what’s going to happen next. When are studios going to learn that less is more?

The clichés littered throughout the film range from the actors take on the characters to the ridiculous tricks at the “Farm”.

The more I seem to see of Colin Farrell the more I am finding something two-dimensional about his acting. I used to rave about this upcoming star but he doesn’t let this character do much more than breathe and wine. The film needed us to be able to get inside Farrell’s head and know how he ticks. That is never achieved.

Pacino seems like he shifted his acting chops into neutral. For most of the film he is laid back and is coasting. When his character starts to rant and scream we are privileged to see glimmers of the Pacino of yesteryear but that’s about all. I love Pacino but here he seems a little washed up.

There are a lot of similarities here to the lukewarm 2001 spy-drama “Spy-Game” which starred Brad Pitt and Robert Redford. Looking past the casting you see this film has a lot of the same problems seen in “Spy-Game”. In spy movies these days we need more twists, action and suspense to really scream about a movie. The audiences have gotten smarter.

The original title for this film was plainly, “The Farm”. Well maybe they should have let this one out to pasture.

(2.5 of 5)

So Says the Soothsayer.

Dean Kish

The Recruit is a tired CIA spy thriller that's
premise has been played out more appealing in other films of its genre. The film looks into the depths of "The Farm," which is the remote facility where the CIA train their would be agents.

The story follows a young computer whiz named James Clayton (Farrell). After being persuadably recruited by CIA veteran Walter Burke (Pacino), James begins his training at "The Farm." His mind, patience, agility, and endurance are tested and trained to think, walk, talk, and work as a CIA operative. Burke sees James as a protigi with unlimited promise. As James training continues he develops a relationship with a beautiful fellow trainee named Layla (Moynahan). As the two get
to know one another, their secrets are tested in one
exercise after another, most of them being initiated
by Burke with the intentions to make each the best CIA operative. After the training concludes through the first half of the film, Burke gives Clayton the
typical assignment of finding a mole in the CIA.
Clayton is left with only trusting himself and his
instincts on completing his mission. He quickly
learns that nothing is what it seems.

The Recruit is a high-tech spy film that takes almost every element that audiences have seen before and places it back on the screen. There are distinct similarities with this film and others like Spy Game (2001), Enemy of the State (1998), and Mission: Impossible (1996).

Director Roger Donaldson is a capable director of
thrillers and espionage, he has proven this in the
past with his work in No Way Out (1987) and Thirteen Days (2000). Donaldson holds some intensity and insight with The Recruit, but most of the film is almost a yawn. I just found myself knowing every secret of the story way before it is revealed and certain sequences took way too long to develop. The replicable "Farm" that Donaldson establishes holds the film's best scenes of interest.

Writers Kurt Wimmer, Mitch Glazer, and the great
Robert Towne (Chinatown) deliver a script that is
merely something that all audiences have seen before. At times, the dialogue is strong, but also bland. Examples are Walter Burke's speeches to the trainees come across as decorous. His lines seem to be actually coming out of the mouth of a government trainer. However, Clayton's cheese-ball lines his reference of gaining his sharp shooting abilities from playing Nintendo games only bring down the film's wanted intelligence. The first half of the film, which takes place mostly at "The Farm", to an extent is decent, even though there are some unlikely moments. The later half of the film, where Clayton is searching for the mole is full of typical Hollywood cliches and the secret of the film is nothing of a surprise.

Al Pacino is one the greatest actors of all time, and
he has an amusing time with his role as
recruiter/trainer of the CIA, Walter Burke. Colin
Farrell is going to be a huge start, and his
performance in this film proves that he has the
persona and presence of a strong actor like Russell
Crowe. Bridget Moynahan also gives a convincing
performance in the film as Clayton's fellow recruit
and love interest.

The Recruit is a very dry film that isn't awful, but
really isn't that entertaining either. The secrets
and actions of the film are all elements that have
been played out before in the spy-thriller genre.

Report Card Grade: C

02/01/03
Copyright, 2003

Joseph C. Tucker

The secret world of espionage has become increasingly more prevalent in recent times, as national security is forced to depend further and further upon intelligence gathered by field operatives. Many people know the various agencies are there, but few know how agents are selected, trained, and utilized in the protection of a nation, and that the intelligence they gather often determines a nations course and actions.

In the new film "The Recruit" director Roger Donaldson takes the audiences inside the secret world of the CIA by showing the process of a young agents recruitment and training. Veteran star Al Pacino plays Walter Burke, a top CIA operative who is charged with recruiting and training the best minds and bodies in America to become operatives. Burke has set his sights upon James Clayton (Colin Farrell), a top computer grad and orphan who after his fathers mysterious death years ago is looking for answers. Burke entices James to join by promising a life far more exciting than what the computer companies are offering him, and by his insistence that being a "scary judge of talent", he knows a sure operative when he sees one.

Before long, James and his fellow recruits are in testing and those that pass find themselves on a secret location known as "The Farm" where they are to be trained into operatives. While in training, James meets a fellow recruit named Layla (Bridget Moynahan), and while there is a spark, there is also some tension between the two. The next part of the film revolves around various aspects of training and eventually leads to James being selected to root out a traitor in their midst. At first James does not know whom to believe but suddenly he like his fellow recruits is locked in a serious situation where the advice given in training that "nothing is as it seems" has never been more evident.

I will refrain from giving away more of the plot as while some areas are predictable; the story does have some nice twists and turns along the way. The chemistry between Farrell and Moynahan is good as is the solid work done by Pacino. There is a hardness about Pacino's portrayal of Burke that is softened by some of the truths he lets slip as we learn that people close to him at times had to be sacrificed for the good of the nation, and that his is a lonely life of shadows and secrets.

My only real complaint with the film is that I found the ending to be to much Hollywood, and not enough in keeping with the story, things seemed to be tidied up at the films end, and I did not expect the line between good and bad to be drawn as sharply as it was, as a major part of the film dealt with the ambiguity that enshrouded many of the characters, and that some sub elements of the film were glossed over, or completely forgotten by the films end.

All in all not a bad film, it just left me wanting more.

3.5 stars out of 5

Gareth Von Kallenbach

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