January 31, 2003 | Addressing a class of would-be superspies at a CIA training facility, recruiter-instructor Walter Burke (Al Pacino) confirms what the novices already suspect: “You have just stepped through the looking glass.”
To his credit, Pacino doesn’t cackle with diabolical glee when he delivers that unmistakably portentous line during an early scene in The Recruit. Nor does he turn and wink at the audience when, baldly planting the seed for a flurry of plot twists, he adds: “Nothing is what it seems.”
In fact, even though the screenplay gives him many opportunities to slip into his scenery-chewing mode – with a “Hoo-hah!” here and a “Hoo-hah!” there – Pacino underplays effectively throughout most of his performance as Burke, a world-weary cynic and master manipulator. The Recruit is a crafty and well-crafted melodrama, the cinematic equivalent of a paperback thriller that might help you pass the time during a trans-Atlantic flight. But this glossy trifle likely wouldn’t be half as much fun if Pacino weren’t around to provide a soupcon of wit and a semblance of gravity.
It also helps that Colin Farrell, finally starting to justify his hype as The Next Big Thing, is so credible and compelling as James Clayton, the put-upon hero of the piece.
Despite the distracting affectation of a permanent five o’clock shadow – his character appears to sport the same amount of stubble for weeks and months on end – Farrell hooks us right from the start, vividly conveying a potent mix of confusion, curiosity and cocksureness as a brilliant MIT grad with a bright future in software design. Burke, a self-described “scary judge of talent,” lures Clayton from killer apps to undercover ops by suggesting – promising? – that he has insider knowledge about Clayton’s long-deceased, much-loved father. Dad died years ago in a plane crash during a work assignment. Burke purposefully implies the late businessman was an Agency spook.
Slyly positioning himself as a paternal figure for a young man desperately yearning for a father, Burke more or less seduces Clayton into joining the CIA. And speaking of seduction: During the arduous training program at a top-secret facility known as “The Farm,” Clayton finds himself drawn to Layla (an aptly ambiguous Bridget Moynahan), a beautiful fellow recruit. Better still, the attraction is mutual.
Trouble is, Layla may not be all that she appears. (Nothing is what it seems, remember?) Worse, the same might be true – well, OK, it definitely is true – of Burke.
Strictly speaking, it would be inaccurate to describe The Recruit as full of surprises because, in this type of film, you’re always expecting the unexpected, and the only real surprise would be no surprise at all. Sure enough, the pitiless betrayals and unpleasant revelations are fairly predictable in their unpredictability, and introduced at regular intervals to keep the paranoid plot mechanics churning to the insistent beat of Klaus Badelt’s mood-enhancing techno-music score. The only really novel touch is saved for the final minutes, when the movie sucker-punches us by not allowing something to happen in the nick of time.
Director Roger Donaldson worked from a similar playbook when he made No Way Out 15 years ago with Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman, and it’s nice to see he can still pull some of the same tricks with undiminished flair and professionalism.
Of course, a few things have changed in the real world since Donaldson’s last spook-versus-spook misadventure. The screenwriters none-too-subtly acknowledge the post-9/11 zeitgeist with some pointed references to perceived failings of the CIA. And Pacino gets a chance to at least nibble on the furniture when Burke alludes to collateral damage done to his career. Still, despite these and other attempts to apply a patina of realism and relevance to the traditional movie-style spy games, The Recruit is nothing more – and, to be fair, nothing less – than a prime example of first-class, audience-friendly escapism.
