Recruit, The [Special Edition]

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"Nothing is what it seems."

Just a year before this film opened, we found Al Pacino co-starring with Robin Williams in the taut mystery "Insomnia." It was a good, complementary pairing of characters we enjoyed learning more about. In 2003's "The Recruit" Pacino is paired with Colin Farrell, another fine actor, but the outcome is quite different. Neither of the characters they play involves us enough to care much about them; consequently, we don't care much about the film, either.

"The Recruit" relies entirely on its convoluted plot to carry the day, and it's not up to the task. Director Roger Donaldson did better when he had a script like "Thirteen Days" to deal with because the events in that film were real and made sense. The script for "The Recruit" feels like a trip through an amusement-park fun house it's so unreal, and not even a talented director can make sense of it.

Resembling Tony Scott's "Spy Game," the 2001 thriller about the older spy tutoring the younger one, "The Recruit" puts CIA agent Pacino into the role of a father figure to young Farrell, whom he persuades to join the organization. From there on, however, the resemblance ends, as the new film forges ahead with a maze of complicated contrivances that make "Spy Game" seem positively matter-of-fact. Add, too, that the leads in "The Recruit" never develop any strong bond and their characters never grow as a result of their circumstances, and you get a fairly routine, if sometimes surprising, motion picture.

Pacino maintains his usual on-screen tough-guy persona as Walter Burke, senior CIA instructor extraordinaire, forever growling out bits of wisdom, barking orders, and looking confident and full of himself. However, since Burke's demeanor never changes through the story, it's up to Farrell's character, James Clayton, to carry the film; but, unfortunately, although he's in virtually every scene, Farrell is not given enough to do to carry anything. Burke is the newcomer, a dynamite computer programmer and part-time bartender, who seems equally as confident as Burke but is infinitely more sensitive. Why if he's such a hotshot programmer he's tending bar, I never did figure out. In any case, Burke wants Clayton to join the team and lures him into trying out with vague promises of revealing the circumstances of Burke's father's mysterious disappearance a dozen years before, possibly as a CIA operative.

The first half of the film recounts Clayton's schooling at the CIA training facility known as "the farm." It is here that Burke tells him for the second time, "Nothing is what it seems." By now it should be clear to the viewer that nothing in the film is to be taken at face value, and we are subsequently exposed to a series of sneaky maneuvers that make our head spin. Burke is there to teach the new recruits "to deceive, role play, psychologically assess, sell, exploit...and kill." The viewer should never forget it.

The Company motto: "Our failures are known; our successes are not." One of the recruits is to be chosen for the golden opportunity of becoming a NOC, a nonofficial cover operative, a true spy, alone and unprotected, the job they all aspire to, heaven knows why. Everything the recruits do, they're told, is a test, and ultimately, everything they do begins to test the patience of the movie audience. It's also at the training facility that Burke falls for a fellow recruit, the beauteous Layla Moore, played by the beauteous Bridget Moynahan. Will one of them attain the elusive goal of becoming a NOC, and if so, how will it affect their relationship?

After the training portion of the film is over, a spy-vs-spy operation consumes the second half. In both sections, tricks and gimmicks abound. Before long, we don't know what's real and what isn't, what's a test and what's not. Halfway through, no one knows what to believe or whom to trust. The only question is how many times will the viewer be taken in.

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