The Recruit

The Recruit
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Roger Donaldson
Produced by	Jeff Apple Gary Barber Roger Birnbaum
Written by	Roger Towne Kurt Wimmer Mitch Glazer
Starring	Al Pacino Colin Farrell Bridget Moynahan Gabriel Macht
Music by	Klaus Badelt
Cinematography	Stuart Dryburgh
Edited by	David Rosenbloom
Production company	Touchstone Pictures Spyglass Entertainment
Distributed by	Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (US) Constantin Film (Germany)
Release dates	January 31, 2003 (2003-01-31) (US) January 15, 2004 (2004-01-15) (Germany)
Running time	115 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$101.2 million[1]

The Recruit is a 2003 American spy thriller film, directed by Roger Donaldson and starring Al Pacino, Colin Farrell and Bridget Moynahan. It was produced by Epsilon Motion Pictures and released in North America by Touchstone Pictures on January 31, 2003, receiving mixed reviews from critics.^[2] The film's tagline is: "In the C.I.A. nothing is what it seems."

Plot

James Clayton (Colin Farrell), a computer programming expert at MIT, impresses several business and consulting experts with a course project called, "Spartacus", a program designed to hijack nearby computers through a wireless network. Having taken note of his skills, senior Central Intelligence Agency instructor Walter Burke (Al Pacino) also approaches Clayton to recruit him for a position with the Agency. Unlike the other offers, Burke makes it clear that while the CIA cannot offer the fame or money of the other offers, it will be a chance to put his skills to use in the service of his country; alternately, Clayton agrees because he wants information about his missing father, who, he suspects, was a CIA agent.

After passing numerous psychometric, psychoanalytic, aptitudinal, and polygraphic tests, Clayton is taken to The Farm, a CIA training facility. There, Burke and other instructors teach the candidates the skill sets of espionage, covert operation protocols, and intelligence gathering techniques. During a surveillance exercise, Clayton and fellow recruit Layla Moore (Bridget Moynahan) are kidnapped by men apparently from a foreign intelligence service. Clayton is tortured in a cell for several days, but refuses to give up the names of his instructors. When the interrogators show him evidence that they have also tortured Layla, Clayton gives in. The rear wall of the cell opens to reveal Burke, Layla, and the other recruits sitting in a lecture theater, having witnessed the whole event, which was a set-up to demonstrate the importance of evading capture.

The CIA summarily dismisses Clayton and he despondently checks into a hotel. Burke arrives and states that instead of being fired, the dismissal itself was staged so that Clayton could become a non-official cover (NOC) agent, the most exclusive of assignments. Burke suspects that the Farm has a penetration, who is trying to steal a computer virus from the headquarters. Because he believes the traitor may be Layla, he assigns Clayton to approach her based on their previous attraction. Burke gives Clayton a low-level desk job at Headquarters so he can get close to Layla. Clayton finds proof that Layla is removing the virus piece by piece using a USB flash drive.

Clayton watches Layla as she secretly passes a note to her contact, and follows the contact through Union Station. After a brief scuffle, Clayton kills him and discovers that he was Zack (Gabriel Macht), a fellow recruit back at The Farm. When Clayton confronts Layla, she cries and protests that it was a security exercise, and that Zack was selected from their class to be a NOC, making it impossible that Clayton received such an assignment. Torn between two conflicting statements, Clayton decides to suspect Burke and trust Layla, believing her show of emotion to be genuine.

Clayton reports back to Burke, who congratulates Clayton on passing the final test. Clayton responds by demanding to know why Zack was killed, but Burke replies that Clayton's gun was loaded with blanks, and that Zack's death was a ruse. However, when Clayton tries to test Burke by firing the "blanks" in his gun at Burke, he deflects and shoots the rear window instead, proving that Burke is lying. Burke chases Clayton through an abandoned ware-house, and boasts that he organized the scheme to sell the virus for $3 million.

Clayton escapes long enough to set up a laptop and load the "Spartacus" software with the intent to broadcast Burke's confession to the CIA. When the CIA comes to arrest Clayton for Zack's death, Burke, believing that he is finally caught, rails about his dissatisfaction with his career. The CIA agents conclude that Burke is the real traitor and instruct the officers on site to target him instead. Burke realizes too late that Clayton did not have the time to set up the "Spartacus" software and were targeting Clayton until he made his speech. Having incriminated himself, he reiterates that he was an excellent recruiter, having correctly determined that Clayton was CIA material. He then draws his gun, forcing the CIA to shoot and kill him. Layla consoles Clayton before he rides back with the CIA agents for debriefing. In the van, Assistant Director of Operations Dennis Slayne (Karl Pruner) makes a comment suggesting that Clayton's father was a NOC agent when he died, and Clayton now realizes that some of Burke's statements had in fact been true.

Main cast

• Al Pacino as Walter Burke
• Colin Farrell as James Douglas Clayton
• Bridget Moynahan as Layla Moore
• Gabriel Macht as Zack
• Kenneth Mitchell as Alan
• Karl Pruner as Dennis Slayne

Production

The film was produced by Gary Barber's and Roger Birnbaum's production company Spyglass Entertainment, with financial support from Disney's Touchstone Pictures and German film financing company Epsilon Motion Pictures (which was owned by the Kirch Group at the time).^[3] It was mainly filmed in Toronto and Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada, with some landmark scenes, such as that from the Iwo Jima Memorial by the Arlington National Cemetery, shot in and around Washington, D.C.

Reception

Critical response

Reviews of the film were mixed. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 43% based on 163 reviews with, an average rating of 5.5 out of 10. The site's consensus states: "This polished thriller is engaging until it takes one twist too many into the predictable."^[2] Metacritic gave it an average score of 56 out of 100 from the 36 reviews it collected.^[4]

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a positive review, with a B+ score. He wrote, "From the get-go, The Recruit is one of those thrillers that delights in pulling the rug out from under you, only to find another rug below that."^[5] Carla Meyer of San Francisco Chronicle also gave a positive review to the film, stating, "Pacino and Farrell bring a wary curiosity to their early scenes, with Farrell displaying a palpable hunger for praise and Pacino a corresponding mastery of how to hook somebody by parceling out compliments. They're a swarthier version of Robert Redford and Brad Pitt in Spy Game -- only The Recruit is more about mind games."^[6]

Todd McCarthy of Variety stated, "The whole picture may be hokey, but the first part is agreeably so, the second part not. At the very least, one comes away with a new appreciation of the difficulty of inner-office romance at the CIA."^[7] Mike Clark of USA Today gave a mixed review to the film, stating, "Nothing is ever what it seems, but still, nothing's very compelling in The Recruit, a less-than-middling melodrama whose subject matter and talent never click as much as its credits portend."^[8]

Box office

The film was released on January 31, 2003, and earned $16,302,063 in its first weekend. Its final gross is $52,802,140 in the United States and $48,389,744 internationally, for a total of $101,191,884.^[1]

References

External links

• The Recruit at the Internet Movie Database
• The Recruit at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Recruit at Metacritic
• The Recruit at Box Office Mojo