James Clayton (Colin Farrell) is a graduating programmer from MIT with hopes of showing off his prize student project and landing that sweet high-paid coding job, that is, until one Walter Burke (Al Pacino) walks into his bar and tells him about a prospecting position with the C.I.A. At first Clayton sees this as a joke, but when Burke starts hinting that Clayton's father was in the business, the young bartender/programmer's curiosity gets piqued.
The Recruit is divided into two major parts, Clayton's training, and Clayton's mission. After extensive tests and profiling, Clayton is shipped off to a rural area known only as The Farm. Here, he and his classmates will learn everything from planting bugs, to self defense, to how to follow a mark. The training is grueling and intensive, but thankfully, Clayton finds a bit of stress release in the pursuit of a fellow classmate, Layla (Bridget Moynahan). But when the training takes a turn for the worse, James is washed out and thrown to the curb. Or at least that's how it appears.
Burke approaches our hero a few days after his discharge, and explains to him that Clayton actually passed his final test and will be accepted into an elite class in the C.I.A.. He will become a super-secret agent, and his first assignment will be to start working in a low security position at Langley, where he will try to sift out a mole who is passing government technology to the enemy.
Unfortunately, I can't talk about this movie without talking about how bad it is when Clayton goes up to the mole's computer and hits a few keys to bring up the code for that person's OS, so he can hack into their computer. First off, no... no, no, no. This can't happen, there is no magic key combination that will pull up the code for your computer, at least not on any system that a security-minded organization like the C.I.A. would use for their most secure areas.
Okay, now that my little rant is over, besides that little technical glitch, I found The Recruit generally enjoyable. The relationships are forged pretty well, and the super-secret espionage aspects of the movie are great. This film is full of twists, right up to the very last lines, so it is a fairly fun ride from beginning to end.
The Recruit is a little light on special features though. There are a few deleted scenes, an audio commentary with Roger Donaldson (Director) and Farrell, but what really intrigued me was the "Spy School" featurette where we see an interview with a C.I.A. employee. He talks about how close the film is to the actual recruitment experience and explains that things like the torturing found in the film don't actually happen, and the fact that he can't officially confirm or deny the existence of training grounds like The Farm, but he does discuss the types of training recruits will go through, not to mention the rigorous interviews and tests that must be passed before even getting a taste of said training.
The Recruit is a fun ride with quite a few twists, as you would expect from a movie where everyone is lying to everyone all the time. It's definitely worth a rental, and if you like it enough, you might consider buying it as well.
