Roger Donaldson's The Recruit: Not much Depth in this Flashy Colin-oscopy
Written: Jan 31 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Some fun gamesmanship and good cast
Cons: There's no "there" there. Nothing to any of it.
The Bottom Line: After the fun wears off, The Recruit is just a bunch of games that go nowhere and get predictable fast.
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| d_fienberg's Full Review: The Recruit |
If God dwells inside us, like some people say,
I sure hope He likes enchiladas, because that's what He's getting!
-- a Jack Handy "Deep Thought"
If Americans are going to movies in record numbers, as some people say, I sure hope They like Colin Farrell, because that's what They're getting!
--a Dan Fienberg "Deep Thought"
Since Joel Schumacher "discovered" Colin Farrell in 2000's Tigerland, the fairly versatile Irish actor has had starmaking roles in American Outlaws, Hart's War, and Minority Report, but in case you haven't noticed, none of those movies have *actually* made Farrell a star. Yet. But Hollywood rarely gives up on a potential "Next James Dean." So in the next 12 months, Mr. Farrell will appear in the much-delayed Phone Booth, the slightly-delayed Veronica Guerin, the summer action-fest S.W.A.T., the smaller-scale Intermission, and in a flashy supporting role in next month's Daredevil. So America, I hope you like Colin Farrell. And Colin Farrell, I hope you like America. Because you're going to be seeing a lot of each other.
The 2003 Colin-oscopy begins today with Roger Donaldson's The Recruit, a film formerly (and more appropriately) called The Farm. If this "inside the CIA" thriller feels a bit like Spy Game or a bit like Donaldson's own espionage thriller No Way Out, you'd better suppress that recognition. And if you can guess the film's big twist within, oh, ten seconds, you'd better suppress that prediction as well. You'd also better suppress any kind of natural desire for the story to open up and gain any kind of scale, or for all of the story threads to tie together, or for much of anything to make sense. But if you can pretend you haven't seen the movie before, and if you can pretend you don't know where the story's going, and if you can pretend that plot holes just don't matter... Well, you might really get a kick out of The Recruit. I couldn't.
Two things to quickly get out of the way: If you've seen the trailer for The Recruit, you've seen the movie. Some plot points have their order juggled, but after the trailer, there's very little new (I suspect Bruce Willis's upcoming war flic Tears of the Sun will probably suffer from the same problem). And the second point, one that may only have hooked me in, is that Robert Towne and Roger Towne are not the same person. Robert Towne is the genius behind Chinatown. Roger Towne is his brother. I was partially interested in The Recruit because I thought Robert wrote it. Nope. That was Roger.
It's difficult to know how much of the plot of The Recruit is open for discussion. James Clayton (Farrell) is a brilliant M.I.T. grad. He's scruffy (Shave *against* the grain, Colin, geez) and geeky and loves to party, but he's also athletic and rakishly charming. Clayton is also haunted by the disappearance of his father nearly twelve years earlier. He's all set to go off and produce software for Dell when he's recruited by Al Pacino With A Goatee ("Are we negotiating?" "Always"... oops, wrong movie). Al Pacino With A Goatee (or AP WAG) works for the CIA and sees great potential in young Clayton and he lures him in with hints that he knew his father. AP WAG convinced Clayton to go to The Farm, an elite CIA agent training ground where he learns to shoot, bug houses, pick up ladies, fight, drive dangerously, and every other skill that can apparently be taught in one or two montages. At The Farm, everything is a test, every training exercise involves a veneer of believability. When does the game end and the real world begin? And, more importantly, when does the game end and the freakin' movie begin? Answer? Never. The whole darned movie is just one game after another with the stakes rising only slightly. Nothing is ever at stake and nothing ever really becomes important. Is Clayton's comely Farm-mate Layla (Bridget Moynahan) a competitive minx or a double agent? Or neither? Is studly former Miami cop Zack (Gabriel Macht) a real character or a total plot device? Or neither? And even though the action in the movie takes place between Washington and Cambridge, Massachusetts, was the whole thing really just shot in Toronto? Well, duh!
The Recruit begins promisingly because is suggests a very interesting subtext about the CIA post-9/11 (although the script was certainly originally written before). The CIA that recruits Jack Clayton is our contemporary Agency, a place where applications are up dramatically, but which can't shake the onus of having dropped the ball on potential terrorist threats. As AP WAG says, when the Agency saves the world, nobody's allowed to know about it, but when the screw up, it's on display for the world. But after setting up this backdrop, 9/11 is never mentioned again until a veiled reference in the finale, which may not even be a reference at all.
Instantly, The Recruit loses any kind of links to a CIA that actually does anything of any value in the real world and reduces the Intelligence community to a game of cat-and-mouse that includes AP WAG, Clayton, Layla, and to a much lesser degree Zack. And rather than dealing in international espionage, the plot hinges on a series of red herrings and Macguffins that can't even stand up to the slightest scrutiny. It's all guys, gadgets, and games.
For a while it's at least fun, even if nothing ever feels smart enough. Think of Top Gun (one of several clear templates for the screenwriters here)... As long as it's all about bluster and cock-blocking between Iceman and Maverick, the movie's a total hoot. But after Goose dies and things start getting really series and self-important, the movie really suffers. Most people just choose to remember the first two-thirds of that film. It's the same in The Recruit. As long as the film doesn't ask us to make an emotional commitment to the trickery, bluffing, and piddly missions, it's on safe ground. It's just people playing around, trying to be CIA agents. Roger Towne, Mitch Glazer, and Kurt Wimmer's script has just enough witty dialogue and stays just fluffy enough to ignore any plausibility issues. Klaus Badelt's anonymous techno-lite score just keeps things movin' along.
But there's nothing underneath. Those three screenwriters did a good job setting things up, but somebody needed to whip out the checkbook and bring David Mamet on board for one last pass through Final Draft Pro. Mamet is a master of providing just enough meditations on masculine identity and dedication to make his otherwise shaky houses of cards stay standing. Sure, Layla's presence messes with Mamet's normal "Boys Club" aesthetic, but he's also good at pin-pointing the isolation of lone women in these worlds of masculinity. Here, nobody bothered to raise the ante.
As he showed in No Way Out and in his last film, 2000's underappreciated Thirteen Days, Roger Donaldson is a solid craftsman of political thrillers, not that there's anything the least bit political about The Recruit. It's just a tight, good-looking piece of work undermined by an empty script and slightly elevated by a photogenic cast.
Farrell still can't do an American accent, a gap that seems to annoy only me. The Irish always seems about ready to break through. He does, however, suggest a respectable combination of inquisitive intellect, able physicality, and prettiness that holds him well. He's mostly believable here, though he never seems quite as smart as the script sets him up to be. Also, in an important poker scene, he's much more talkative than anybody bluffing should be. A good card play would have taken him to town. Farrell shows himself to be in the Brad Pitt/Tom Cruise class of decent actors/action stars, rather than the Keanu Reeves/ Chris O'Donnell class.
Bridget Moynahan's saddled with a really distractingly awful haircut that almost takes away from how stunning she is. I hate to say this, but she's four years older than her co-star and the age difference shows (and isn't really explained). And her part is a problem to begin with for reason that hardly seem worth going into. Basically, Moynahan gives a pretty, but not really convincing performance.
And Al Pacino plays Al Pacino With A Goatee. The dude's just not asked to *act* very much these days, so he does that annoying thing where he drawls every line like it's a song where only he knows the tune. He yells for no reason and he talks with a pointless air of superiority. Basically, every once in a while Pacino has to give a great performance like in Insomnia or Donnie Brasco just so that viewers can recognize when he's phoning it in. Here, he's phoning it in. What's especially annoying is that Pacino's mannerism shackle any kind of surrogate father-son bond that's supposed to develop with Farrell.
For nearly an hour, The Recruit is painless enough entertainment that offers no risk of higher thought. But as the plot keeps twisting in the final few reels, I kept praying that *something*, *anything*, would happen to surprise me. Nothing did.
Only two more weeks til the next Colin Farrell movie.
I could probably go to 2.5 stars here. But I'm not gonna.
Recommended:
No
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