• Director: Roger Donaldson
• Staring: Al Pacino, Colin Farrell, Bridget Moynahan
• Released: 2003
• Genre: Thriller
• Score: 75%
• IMDB Link: The Recruit (2003)

The Recruit is a great film that unfortunataly left me feeling a little let down at the end. The start is not the best ever made and the end is, well, just the end really. The opening 10 minutes of the film deal with getting James Clayton (Colin Farrell) from his current employment into the employ of the CIA as a trainee. The problem is that it’s as if someone not familiar with the story was brought in at the last minute to give James Clayton a history. The whole thing feels rushed and poorly put together. One minute James is an uber-hacker courting Dell, the next he is working in a bar and then all of a sudden he is training with the CIA. One is left to assume that he is actually an uber-hacker in his spare time and is doing bar work to get by.

The end of the film though is the biggest lef down. I can’t quite put my finger on what is wrong but it just didn’t get my blood pumping. The car chase seems flat and boring as does the scene that follows it where they try and figure out who has been turned. The film finishes with a chase though a warehouse and some more dull dialog between Walter and James about James’s father. Quite why they felt the need to play the “I’m searching for the truth” card in this film I don’t know. Why couldn’t James have just been motivated by the adventure of joining the CIA? I, personally, thought Walter’s speach at the end was quite good. Al Pachino gives a good on-screen public speech in any movie and this is no exception. A little more work on the script could have made it a speech to remember and turned around an otherwise unispiring ending.

There is a small section of this film that supprised me. It is at the start when James is talking to a Dell representative. The software that James is showing off is able to take over any remote display and show whatever he wants it to display. It is obviously mis-using anothers resources and therefore puts it in the realms of computer crime. The Dell guy though seems really keen on this software and ever asks to James to take over a Sony display. How come Dell didn’t sue the producers of this film? It casts Dell in a seriously bad light as supporters of computer criminals.