| |
Ah, the CIA. Guns, lies, combat training, secret-ops, car chases,
double-crossing, computer hacking, secret identities, weapons
of mass chaos, lie detectors, second-guessing, and of course –
people getting shot. Add all this to a young, strong, athletic,
super-smart, good-looking, good-hearted protagonist with an attractive
romantic interest. What will they think of next?
Don’t get me wrong, The Recruit is clever. But
it’s like a script that received a good grade in some screenwriting
workshop teaching how to write blockbuster scripts. The film starts
with Walter Burke (Al Pacino) recruiting James Clayton (Collin
Ferrall) to work for the CIA. Burke reminds Clayton, as he undergoes
his training, that “everything is a test.” So, for
the first hour of the film, Clayton passes through some tedious
training and some rough tests. A lot of it is pointless, except
for the fact that it’s cool to watch CIA agents train and
suffer through lie detectors and stuff.
The second half lets us watch our hero in his first real test.
Not to give away any spoilers, but at this point it’s safe
to say that he succeeds. The script is clever with its theme of
“nothing is as it seems” and it always keeps you on
your toes. The obligatory side-love story actually ties into the
main story, building a level of tension and developing an interesting
love/hate relationship. But then again, nothing we haven’t
seen James Bond entangled in before.
Other things don’t work so well. The whole subplot of Clayton’s
search for the truth behind his father’s life and death
ends up revealing nothing but what he already suspects. The payoff
on the subject doesn’t add up to all the time spent throughout
the film on it. The ending seems to have some holes in it as well.
But The Recruit is fun. Al Pacino is great as always
and Ferrall has a certain innocence about him that makes him sympathetic.
As clever as the film is, it’s a sort of standard, run of
the mill kind of clever, as paradoxical as that may sound. Basically,
you stay engaged as long as the film is running, but no longer.
|
|
|
