The Next Big Thing meets with the Last Big Thing in "The Recruit." The former is Colin Farrell, Hollywood's hottest wonder-boy and the latter is Al Pacino. At this point in his career, Pacino is allowed to do pretty much anything he wants, yet he rarely strays from his forte: yelling and looking tired. No one in his league comes close to combining red-veined bug eyes, a whitish three-day stubble and a mouth that always seems ready to dispense embittered bons mots -- and still have sizzling charisma. In another 40 or so years, though, Farrell may be that kind of guy. He already has the stubble and those penetrating dark eyes. Start that boy on a steady diet of bourbon, cigars and tragic relationships.
"The Recruit" is about how a worn and weathered CIA agent handpicks a bright, young MIT graduate and grooms him for espionage. The opening 30 minutes are the film's best: Walter Burke (Pacino) walks into a bar that James (Farrell) is tending and asks him point-blank to hook his future to the CIA. James is both intrigued ("Will I have to kill anyone?") and contemptuous ("The CIA is full of boring, fat white guys who were sleeping when we needed them the most"), but when Burke hints that he knew James' father, a Shell Oil exec who supposedly died in a plane crash years back, he decides to join so he can question Burke some more. The agent responds with one of the many CIA rejoinders apparently stashed in his crumpled overcoat: "I don't have any answers -- only secrets."
Soon, James is down on "the Farm," CIA lingo for the new recruits' boot camp, which is run by Burke. First he drills everyone on the basics: "Nothing is what it seems. Trust no one," which he most certainly copped from watching "The X-Files" -- another agency, but so what. Then he gives them assignments, which range from tricky (seducing someone at a bar) to slippery (pretending to be another person) to standard procedure (bombing cars). The hip, suave James proves himself adept at all three, and Burke declares himself satisfied with his new protege: "I told you, I'm a scary judge of talent."
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