Movie Review: The Recruit

The Recruit (2003) 

Directed by Roger Donaldson 

Written by Roger Towne, Kurt Wimmer, Mitch Glazer 

Starring Al Pacino, Colin Farrell, Bridget Moynihan, Gabriel Macht 

Release Date January 31st, 2003 

Published January 30th, 2003 

Is Al Pacino's act running thin? An unquestionably brilliant actor for most of his career, Pacino has been uneven at best in his most recent work. His last, the Hollywood satire Simone, was a middling comedy that featured a mugging, forced performance by Pacino. However, the film before that, the ingenious thriller Insomnia, showed Pacino at his best. His newest work continues the spate of uneven performances as Pacino plays mentor/tormentor to Colin Farrell in The Recruit.

In The Recruit, Al Pacino plays CIA recruiter Walter Burke, a grizzled vet whose job it is to find the next generation of agents. Burke has his eye on an MIT student named James Clayton (Farrell), whose father may or may not have been an agent himself. Clayton isn't interested at first, but suspicions as to whether his father was an agent and whether Burke knew him, and how his father died, cause Clayton to join up.

Soon Clayton is shipped off to the Farm, the CIA's highly secretive spy training ground. Burke is the Farm's lead trainer and though he was friendly with Clayton while recruiting him, Burke is quick to let Clayton know that things are different on the Farm. From now on, nothing is what it seems as students and teachers turn tables on each other in a series of testy spy games meant to wash out the weak and send the strong on to the CIA. While at the Farm, Clayton meets Layla (Bridget Moynihan), another potential agent whose alluring chemistry with Clayton may or may not be an act.

The Recruit is a construct of numerous setups meant to lead the audience in one direction and then pull the rug out from under them. Unfortunately, the setups are rather ham-handed and lack any real suspense. Any intelligent audience member can see where the film is going. That is, until the end--which is a minor surprise--but by then, the movie has spent so much time jerking the audience around with one random twist after another, it becomes hard to really care.

Farrell is very good in a role that requires his character to be very smart but yet, easily manipulated by Pacino's character who may a bad guy or may be a good guy. Farrell has the look of a star; he's charismatic and engaging with a strong good-guy swagger. There are moments where he evokes a young Mel Gibson. Like it or not, that Hollywood buzz about Farrell being the next big thing may be more than just hype.

If the rest of The Recruit were as good as Farrell, it would have been a very good film. Unfortunately, director Roger Donaldson takes this intelligent character and buries him with an uninteresting love interest, a hammy Al Pacino, and a plot that twists and turns so much as to exhaust the audience rather than entertain it. Colin Farrell has a very bright future in front of him and The Recruit will do little to slow his momentum as he builds towards bigger roles in Daredevil and the delayed, but much buzzed about, Phone Booth. The Recruit will be just another film on his resume soon enough.