Dir: Roger Donaldson. Starring: Al Pacino, Colin Farrell, Bridget Moynahan, Gabriel Macht, Kenneth Mitchell.
The Recruit is a fairly typical spy movie; conspiracy heaped on conspiracy, and a glamorous job where everybody has three flat screen computers, because God knows you couldn’t just use a different window.
Colin Farrell stars as James Clayton, the only buff computer geek in America, fresh out of MIT with a snazzy new program and a hankering for answers about his Father’s secret life and death. The answer man in this case Al Pacino, aka Wlater Burke, a CIA recruiter who likes a bit of Irish in his coffee. Burke thinks James has potential, so before he can say “bureaucracy”, it’s out to the ominous Farm, where operatives are picked from a bunch of fresh-faced graduates.
Presumably the only graduate under thirty, James has a considerable advantage, but – of course – nothing is as it seems at the farm. “Everything is a test”, Burke reminds us, and it certainly is a test enduring some of the clichéd spy training that takes place.
Things get marginally more complicated when James becomes involved with the only female applicant, Layla. Is he a spy? Is she a Spy? Is this as bad as I Psy?
The answer, mercifully, is no. The script is weak, predictable and so clearly constructed you can still see the pop rivets, but the acting is uniformly better
The real problem with The Recruit is that it’s naïve, and hopelessly patriotic. We live in an age of scepticism, and this starry-eyed view of a complex, and morally very ambiguous organization is childish. Le Carre and films like the excellent Tailor of Panama have cracked open myths about the secret service, and equipped with that knowledge, it’s hard not to view The Recruit as propaganda.
Unfortunately, this has been compounded by the fact it has little to say about the effect of the CIA on psychology, personality and, indeed, us. As a thriller it’s essentially The Firm, mark II. The use of the CIA seems to be a marketing decision, and it’s disappointing.
C+
Patrick Garson.
Click here to discuss The Recruit on our film forum.
GC(uk) Email Advanced Site Search
 |
| Let Spyonit.com notify you when this page changes! |