The Recruit (film)

For other uses, see The Recruit (film) (disambiguation).

The Recruit
Directed by	Roger Donaldson
Written by	Roger Towne Kurt Wimmer Mitch Glazer
Produced by	Jeff Apple Gary Barber Roger Birnbaum
Starring	Al Pacino Colin Farrell Bridget Moynahan Gabriel Macht
Cinematography	Stuart Dryburgh
Edited by	David Rosenbloom
Music by	Klaus Badelt
Production companies	Touchstone Pictures Spyglass Entertainment Epsilon Motion Pictures
Distributed by	Buena Vista Pictures
Release dates	January 25, 2003 (2003-01-25) (Febio Film Festival) January 31, 2003 (2003-01-31) (United States)
Running time	115 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$46 million
Box office	$101.2 million

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 and grossing $101 million worldwide.

Plot

James Clayton (Farrell) is a graduate student at MIT who has co-developed a software program called “Spartacus” that allows a computer to hijack the camera and microphones of nearby computers via a wireless connection. At a convention, James and his team showcase the software to representatives from Dell who show interest in purchasing the software and possibly recruiting James. During his interaction with the Dell representatives, James notices Walter Burke (Pacino) observing their conversation from a balcony.

Later, Burke approaches James while the latter is tending bar. Burke shows James a magic trick in which he proceeds to shred a newspaper into multiple pieces, and then restores the paper to it’s original form. In so doing, Burke uses the trick to reveal his affiliation with the CIA. Incredulous, James indulges Burke briefly before Burke leaves, insinuating that James deceased father was a part of the agency at the time of his death. This captures James’ attention and, seeking to understand more about his father’s death, takes Burke up on his invitation to join the agency.

James goes through an initial screening process before he’s sent to The Farm with a bus load of other recruits, including Zack (Macht) and Layla (Moynahan). James develops a romantic interest in Layla and an adversarial relationship with Zack. Upon arriving at the farm, the pool of recruits is progressively narrowed down as they go through various forms of training in CIA tradecraft including interrogation techniques, combat, and explosives training. James excels in his performance, though he humiliates Layla during one of the interrogation exercises when he divulges personal and private information about her while she is connected to an advanced polygraph machine.

During an exercise in which the recruits are placed in pairs and tasked with tailing a mark, a group of men abduct James and Layla who were paired together. They’re both imprisoned and subsequently tortured for information on The Farm and it’s personnel, specifically Burke. James holds out for several days, though when the leader suggests that Layla has undergone torture and may even be killed, James relents and offers up Burke’s name after the men had left the room. At that moment, the back wall of the room opens up to reveal that the entire scenario had been staged, with Layla as a part of the ruse, and James was used as an object lesson in resisting torture, with the moral to never get caught.

Having failed the exercise, James washes out of The Farm and is left at a small motel where he begins drinking heavily. Eventually Burke makes contact with James again where he reveals that James didn’t truly wash out, but his departure from The Farm was a necessary farce to establish James as the non-official cover operative (NOC). It had to appear as though James’ career with the CIA was finished, though in actuality, he achieved the most coveted role.

Burke explains that the CIA has developed a doomsday software program called “ICE-9”, named for and modeled after the molecule “Ice Nine” from the Kurt Vonnegut book Cat’s Cradle. According to Burke, this virus has the ability to spread through electrical grids and wipe out every electrical device in the world, ostensibly leading to a catastrophic failure of society; the virus behaving just like it's fictional counterpart in the Vonnegut novel with similar devastating effects. Burke believes that Layla is a sleeper agent. Now working as a security analyst, he alleges that Layla is quietly smuggling pieces of the virus out of CIA headquarters for her handlers. He inserts James into a low-level data entry position so he can re-establish contact with Layla and use their prior relationship as a basis for getting close enough to her to determine how she’s removing the virus.

James manages to succeed in reconnecting with Layla and the two establish a relationship. He uses the tactics and technology he saw at The Farm to gain intel on Layla’s activities in the CIA. After a period of time James surmises that Burke is right and Layla is attempting to hand off the completed virus to an unknown group.

Attempting to stop her, James tails her to a train station where he witnesses her handoff a USB flash drive to an unknown figure. He pursues the man through the train station until the two engage in a shootout on the tracks with James shooting the man fatally. James approaches the man as he takes his final breath only to discover the man is Zack. James then pursues Layla and ends up running her off the road. Holding her at gunpoint, James demands an explanation to which Layla tells him that she was assigned to assess the security protocols at the CIA and that they knew what she was doing specifically so they could tighten up any leaks or loopholes in their on-sight security. She explains the whole thing was an exercise, and not real, and that she would be seeing Zack later that night along with some other friends. However, when James informs her that Zack's dead Layla becomes uncertain about what's happening.

James realizes he’s been manipulated by Burke and confronts him at a rendezvous point. James gets into Burke's car and asks Burke about Zack, Burke attempts to calm James and convince him that the gun's loaded with blanks. Thinking he's sufficiently subdued James, Burke attempts to swat James gun away. The gun goes off, shooting out the rear window of Burke's car, thus proving Burke was lying. As it turns out, Burke is the one looking to sell ICE-9 to a buyer, angry that his long service with the agency has gone unappreciated, and that he has hardly any pension or retirement income to show for his sacrifice. Finally, he explains he no longer has faith in the agency or their mission.

Held at gunpoint by Burke, James reveals a laptop with his Spartacus software running, indicating that Burke’s entire confession was just broadcast to the CIA. Burke destroys the laptop and pursues James through the warehouse until the two rush out of the front only to face a CIA strike team. Burke launches into a tirade over his perceived mistreatment by the CIA only for the strike team to realize through Burke’s ranting that he is the perpetrator they're looking for, having arrived on site originally to arrest James. Having been tricked by James into confessing aloud to the strike team and the case officers leading the team, Burke decides to force his suicide by cop, aiming an empty pistol at the strike team and getting shot to death.

With Burke dead, James is taken back to headquarters by Dennis (Karl Pruner), one of the instructors from The Farm. Along the way, Dennis implies that James’ father was a NOC like him and that his apparent death in Peru thirteen years earlier happened while he was on a CIA mission.

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). 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 167 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." Metacritic gave it an average score of 56 out of 100 from the 36 reviews it collected.

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." 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."

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 interoffice romance at the CIA." 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."

In 2009, the movie was reviewed by new CIA employees, who wrote that although "everyone in the Agency believes the movie is ridiculous", the movie is "entertaining" and that "all of the covert service trainees watched the film on the bus going into training" for "comic relief".

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.

External links

• The Recruit at IMDb
• The Recruit at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Recruit at Metacritic
• The Recruit at Box Office Mojo
• The Recruit on YouTube