Warning: SPOILERS
Pity the poor CIA. As if it wasn't bad enough being slagged off in books and newspapers, even worse is the fate that awaits where movie-makers are concerned. You'd have thought Spy Games' was about as bad as it could get, but lo, here cometh another that's even worse: The Recruit', an over-long over-wrought essay on the theme that nothing is as it seems and no-one is who they say they are and spooks have a frankly awful job to do but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.
There's originality then.
As to the plot, well; demented CIA veteran (Al Pacino) approaches half-wit computer nerd (Colin Farrell) on the very day the nerd achieves a software breakthrough that will earn him billions of dollars. The nerd, who hasn't hitherto had the slightest interest in spies or spying, nevertheless abandons his lifetime's ambition and instantly agrees to go to CIA recruitment school, during the course of which it is endlessly pointed out, in tones commensurate with the revelation of hitherto undiscovered universal truths, that nothing is as it seems and no-one is who they say they are and spooks have a frankly awful job to do but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. (Haven't we heard that before somewhere?)
The nerd's training course is exceptionally tedious but relieved by sustained physical violence inflicted with such force that the nerd, if he'd indeed had half a brain, could actually have sued Uncle Sam for almost as much in damages as he would have earned from his software creation. But. . . He doesn't.
Instead, he survives multiple injuries to face, jaw, kidneys and skull by dint of drinking some whisky and then goes off on an assignment from the mad Pacino who wishes him to know, yet again, that nothing is as it seems and no-one is who they say they are and spooks have a frankly awful job to do but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. (I'm sure we've heard that before somewhere).
As to the reason why the nerd is chosen for Pacino's mission, well. . . It's because he is the brightest trainee the CIA has had in thirty years, even though it eventually transpires that he is utterly incapable of telling the difference between a gun loaded with blanks and one stuffed with live ammo.
But he can't. And so there are a couple of chases and a bit of sex and the nerd fires blanks or maybe he doesn't because nothing is as it seems and no-one is who no, no; let's not go there again.
And at the end of it all, in a climax even more exciting than watching mushrooms grow, Pacino wishes us to understand that nothing is as it seems and for God's sake, no more!
And the nerd presumably goes back to knocking the hell out of a punchbag in the gym, this being an activity the scriptwriters repeatedly home in on in order to demonstrate that being a nerd doesn't necessarily mean you can't be macho too. Oh; and he also (presumably) goes back to mooning over the death of his father, who died in a plane crash in 1990 in South America for reasons the nerd cannot understand but which may have something to do with the fact that the plane his father was travelling in, er, crashed.
So. There it is. The Recruit': as plot-less, witless, charm-less and pointless as anything to emerge from the US in recent times. But hey! Moviemakers have a frankly awful job and they gotta do what they gotta do.
Pacino, however, doesn't. And for that there's really no excuse.
Rating: 0 /10.
Pity the poor CIA. As if it wasn't bad enough being slagged off in books and newspapers, even worse is the fate that awaits where movie-makers are concerned. You'd have thought Spy Games' was about as bad as it could get, but lo, here cometh another that's even worse: The Recruit', an over-long over-wrought essay on the theme that nothing is as it seems and no-one is who they say they are and spooks have a frankly awful job to do but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.
There's originality then.
As to the plot, well; demented CIA veteran (Al Pacino) approaches half-wit computer nerd (Colin Farrell) on the very day the nerd achieves a software breakthrough that will earn him billions of dollars. The nerd, who hasn't hitherto had the slightest interest in spies or spying, nevertheless abandons his lifetime's ambition and instantly agrees to go to CIA recruitment school, during the course of which it is endlessly pointed out, in tones commensurate with the revelation of hitherto undiscovered universal truths, that nothing is as it seems and no-one is who they say they are and spooks have a frankly awful job to do but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. (Haven't we heard that before somewhere?)
The nerd's training course is exceptionally tedious but relieved by sustained physical violence inflicted with such force that the nerd, if he'd indeed had half a brain, could actually have sued Uncle Sam for almost as much in damages as he would have earned from his software creation. But. . . He doesn't.
Instead, he survives multiple injuries to face, jaw, kidneys and skull by dint of drinking some whisky and then goes off on an assignment from the mad Pacino who wishes him to know, yet again, that nothing is as it seems and no-one is who they say they are and spooks have a frankly awful job to do but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. (I'm sure we've heard that before somewhere).
As to the reason why the nerd is chosen for Pacino's mission, well. . . It's because he is the brightest trainee the CIA has had in thirty years, even though it eventually transpires that he is utterly incapable of telling the difference between a gun loaded with blanks and one stuffed with live ammo.
But he can't. And so there are a couple of chases and a bit of sex and the nerd fires blanks or maybe he doesn't because nothing is as it seems and no-one is who no, no; let's not go there again.
And at the end of it all, in a climax even more exciting than watching mushrooms grow, Pacino wishes us to understand that nothing is as it seems and for God's sake, no more!
And the nerd presumably goes back to knocking the hell out of a punchbag in the gym, this being an activity the scriptwriters repeatedly home in on in order to demonstrate that being a nerd doesn't necessarily mean you can't be macho too. Oh; and he also (presumably) goes back to mooning over the death of his father, who died in a plane crash in 1990 in South America for reasons the nerd cannot understand but which may have something to do with the fact that the plane his father was travelling in, er, crashed.
So. There it is. The Recruit': as plot-less, witless, charm-less and pointless as anything to emerge from the US in recent times. But hey! Moviemakers have a frankly awful job and they gotta do what they gotta do.
Pacino, however, doesn't. And for that there's really no excuse.
Rating: 0 /10.