The Recruit | AccessAtlanta

The Recruit

Colin Farrell is chasing and being chased.

FILM FACTS

Starring: Al Pacino, Colin Farrell, Bridget Moynahan, Gabriel Macht and Kenneth Mitchell
Director: Roger Donaldson
Rating: PG-13 for violence, sexuality and language
Genre: Spy, Thriller

Discuss this film | Official movie site

On DVD 05/27/03 (PG-13) 95 minutes

The verdict: You've seen this before, but probably not done this well.

Grade: B

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The new spy thriller "The Recruit" provides a needed middle-ground alternative to the "prestige" Oscar hopefuls and the usual midwinter mediocrities.

Fast-paced and well-acted, the movie sometimes falls into genre conventions — plant those bugs, chase those cars, hack into those computers — but director Roger Donaldson has given it an old-school solidity that's always welcome, midwinter or midsummer.

James Clayton (Colin Farrell) is a computer genius, recently graduated from MIT. Before he has a chance to meet with his high-tech suitors who want to pay him a high-end salary for his skills, he's accosted by Walter Burke (Al Pacino), who casually sketches out his entire future in about two sentences (the wife, the 2.5 kids, the $200,000 a year) and offers an alternative .�.�. the CIA. When Burke dangles possible info about Clayton's father, who died in a plane crash in 1990, the kid is hooked.

Sent to the spook training camp, aka The Farm, in bucolic Langley, Va., Clayton learns how to lie, cheat, kill and accept the fact there's no glory in this job; agents who die in the line of duty are commemorated with a star on a wall and a blank space in a memorial book at CIA headquarters. However, the most important lesson he learns is not to trust anyone, including Layla (Bridget Moynahan), a gorgeous trainee who speaks Farsi and pick-up-bar small talk with equal aplomb.

What follows is a spy game in which we're never quite sure who is tailing who or who is watching who or who is who.

Ever since his breakout performance in the critically lauded "Tigerland," Farrell has run into a streak of bad luck. He keeps getting sure-thing roles that don't work out (with the possible exception of "Minority Report"). He was cast opposite Bruce Willis in "Hart's War," and the movie, while good, went nowhere. He had a star-turn in "Phone Booth" which was supposed to premiere last fall, but the release was postponed because of the D.C. sniperssniper attacks. (It's now scheduled for late March.)

Finally, he's in a film that not only give him loads of screen time, but also showcases his talent as well as his good looks. During some scenes, you don't know whether to focus on his acting or on those two adorable Cindy Crawford moles on his left cheek.

Pacino sports a goatee, which is never a good sign with him. However, he holds the hoo-hah to a minimum, until the last half hour or so. The role is a little too reminiscent of the slippery character he played in "The Devil's Advocate," but overall, it's good work by a great actor.

Donaldson knows his way around thrillers, as he proved with "No Way Out" and "Thirteen Days." "The Recruit" isn't as good as those films, but it certainly carries its escapist weight.

Throughout the picture, Burke keeps saying he has "a scary gift for spotting talent." If, as I suspect, Pacino used his star-clout to get Farrell cast, he has the same gift off-screen as well.