THE RECRUIT

Perhaps if James gets on the inside of the government, he can find answers to questions that have haunted him all his life. Or not.

The morning after I saw The Recruit, I ended up sitting next to two men on the bus that were having an animated conversation about conspiracy theories (one of them crowed about his "leading conspiracy theory website", of which I will pointedly not give the URL here). More specifically: these fellows were in the "trust no one, least of all the U.S. government" vein of babblers. But think, if Al Pacino approached one of these guys in a bar, with his typical bad-ass air of confidence, and slyly dropped hints of knowledge of all of that fellow's dirty laundry... then said, "Hey, wanna join the C.I.A.? You've got just what we're looking for!" You'd just bet they'd jump to attention. Despite pop culture's distrust of the men in black, deep down inside, everyone wants to be a secret agent.

Thusly, bad-ass agent Walter Burke (Al Pacino) picks up young, dishevelled, smarty-pants computer-programmer-slash-bartender James (Colin Farrell, who always has three-days' worth of stubble), and recruits him to join the C.I.A. Though James is a little hesitant, Burke plays to his weakness of curiosity. You see, James' father, a big Shell Oil man (or secret agent?) died in a mysterious plane crash in Peru in 1990, and James has been on a quest to find out the Truth about what happened to his father. Perhaps if James gets on the inside of the government, he can find answers to questions that have haunted him all his life.

Or at least that, I guess, is the deeper meaning that we are supposed to get from the film. Young man finds new father figure. Trusts him. Then maybe doesn't. Then maybe just wants to, despite all. Then maybe realizes that wasn't a good idea.

The Recruit isn't an awful film. The first half of the movie involves a supposedly behind-the-scenes look at C.I.A. training in action, at a top secret location called The Farm. Shoot, after seeing this, who wouldn't want to learn tricks of the trade, like how to disarm someone who has a gun pointed at your chest, or how to get ahold of these cool dissolvable stickers that are high-tech bugs that you can plant on your least favorite people for a couple of days?

But about midway through, momentum shifts and lurches around, as James gets involved in a mysterious assignment where no one is whom he or she seems to be. There is a sort-of love story involving him and another recruit named Layla (Bridget Moynahan, who rises above her role), but this seems sort of tacked on. By the time the ending rolls around, there have been all sorts of plot twists and turns, an inevitable showdown, and a revelation to wrap it up that may or may not make any sense. But even if it doesn't quite gel at the end, you don't really care enough at that point to dwell on figuring it out once the lights come up.

The Recruit is watchable in a popcorn-flick kind of way. But it is not particularly a good example of the genre (perhaps this is why it has been dumped in the post-holidays black hole of movie releases?). There are plenty of movies, like Enemy of the State, or The Conversation, or La Femme Nikita, that play the spy game much better. Go to the video store and check those out instead.