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The Recruit (2003)
It's all about the script people. A solidly written script can make up for a lot of mistakes in the making of a film but not even the best actors and directors can salvage a bad script. Now don't assume from this that I believe that The Recruit has a bad script. It has two thirds of a good script and one third of a bad one. That generates a movie somewhere along the middle of the rating scale. If it had an ending to match the first two acts, I'd be gushing about this film.
The movie stars Colin Farrell as James Clayton, a brilliant young programmer from MIT. He is being recruited to a cushy job at Dell when he meets Walter Burke, another recruiter, played by Al Pacino. Burke is recruiting for the CIA and he lures James in by dropping hints about his late father, also of the CIA. James goes for it and soon finds himself at the CIA's rustic training facility known as The Farm. Here he learns all the good spy stuff like tailing people, blowing things up, shooting people, planting listening devices and how to pick up women. That's right, they receive training on hooking up.
James meets another recruit, the lovely Layla (Bridget Moynihan), and quickly finds himself more than a little infatuated with her. The feeling it seems, is mutual. The two have some good chemistry together and don't come off as too contrived. Their relationship is a key to the movie's plot and the actors compatibility really sells it well.
Pacino seemed to have a lot of the fun with this role, and thus so do we. Burke is a grizzled veteran, spouting equal amounts of cliche and valuable information, provided you know which is which and what to do with it. He repeatedly says that nothing is as it seems and that is very true. His character is hard to pin down, we never know when he's fooling with us and when he's serious. His recruits certainly never know and watching them dance according to his mind games is good fun.
Farrell is someone I've been predicting big things from for awhile now and he continues to impress. He combines great charisma with an intensity that makes him stand out from the crowd. In his hands we can't help but like James or take our eyes off him. He's a strange mixture of naivete and cunning. We're never sure when he knows what he's doing or when he's just stumbling by on blind luck. This is a solid performance but by no means Farrell's best work. Since exploding on the movie scene with the small film Tigerland, he's been appearing in steadily higher profile films but with something of a plateau in material to work with. Hopefully he'll pick the occasional challenge to remind everyone just how good he is.
The biggest problem with this movie is the ending. All of the careful plotting and building up disintegrates into chaos and predictable plot twists. I won't go into details but let's just say that one of the main characters does a mean impersonation of a Bond villain. If you don't see it coming, you probably fell asleep or took an extended bathroom break at some point.
There's too much good material here to pan the movie but it has such a bad ending that it's also hard to endorse it. Good performances from Pacino, Farrell and Moynihan along with solid direction from Roger Donaldson (Thirteen Days) make it worth your time. And you can save on that time by ducking out before the last ten minutes or so.
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