James Clayton (Colin Farrell) is graduating the top of his class at MIT, and he's just the person that Walter Burke (Al Pacino) wants in the CIA. In order to become an operative though, James has to endure "The Farm", the Agency's training center where recruits are molded into operatives. Burke teaches James the ropes and the rules of the game, allowing him to quickly rise through the ranks of his class.
At the same time, he also falls for Layla (Bridget Moynahan), a fellow recruit. Just as James begins to question certain things, such as his relationship with his mentor and Burke may know about Clayton's missing father, Walter taps him for a special assignment - to uncover a mole deep within the Agency.
The Recruit is one of those slick spy thrillers that starts out okay but quickly deteriorates into a cloud of predictability, throwing in far too many unnecessary twists when its quite obvious who the villain is. The first third, dealing with Clayton's training, is decent enough. The semi-clever twists and turns here allow for a moderate amount of entertainment. Yet when the plot moves into Clayton's first assignment, The Recruit stumbles and takes quite a while to reach its tired conclusion.
When he has a decent script to work with, Roger Donaldson is a director who can turn in excellent work. Thirteen Days and No Way Out are two fine examples. If the script stinks, he comes up with Species. The script for The Recruit, credited to three people no less, isn't as bad as Species but it's also no Thirteen Days or No Way Out. Thinly written characters given little to do hardly make for a fun time at the flicks.
Pacino, coming off a good performance in last year's Simone and a great one in Insomnia, goes through the motions en route to a big payday as world-weary mentor Burke. He underplays his character to the point that I expected him to doze off during one of his little speeches to the recruits. Al goes over the top only in the film's conclusion and I think that was more to wake the audience up than it was to get a point across.
It still remains to be seen if Colin Farrell can justify all the hype surrounding him or his career. His lackadaisical performance in this film is just another average acting job
(Moynahan, the film's eye candy, upstages both Farrell and Pacino). He can deliver a line of dialogue just fine, it's the conviction he has a problem with. If he put as much effort into his performances as he does his highly publicized social life, Farrell might have a career worth commenting on.
The Recruit shares similar traits with Tony Scott's recent spy thriller, Spy Game. This is probably a bit more on the ball than Scott's film but neither amount to much. If you want to see an entertaining, exciting spy thriller, check out The Bourne Identity instead.
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