Review of The Recruit (2003) by Amheretojudge — 05 Nov 2018

A big cry for help..

The Recruit Donaldson's spy thriller is a big question to the genre it claims to be. This is a no go from the first frame itself. No matter how alluring and intriguing the concept may sound like, it is completelya big cry for help..

The Recruit.

Donaldson's spy thriller is a big question to the genre it claims to be. This is a no go from the first frame itself. No matter how alluring and intriguing the concept may sound like, it is completely shallow and empty to the core. It is a tale extracted from a chapter of a textbook, which too was unfortunately mediocre. It has the same old storyline that we have been listening to over the years, even the surprises are so bizarrely installed, that you can see the station far before it arrives. On terms of script, it is a big cry for help. It needed the polishing aplenty and better supervision on both editing and execution. This meaningless chase of cat and mouse, is clearly outdated.

The foggy roads, the shady deals, finite set of characters and involuntary sacrifices, every aspect of the plot shucks away its integrity. It doesn't take itself seriously. What it has got right, is the cast. Pacino is the perfect riddler for the role, his promising commitment itself is convincing enough to be the apt host to take a tour of this world. Farrell, on his parallel role, gets overpowered by Pacino at times and since his role demands such a position, he holds onto that piece of thread till the last frame. The other supporting cast like Moynahan and Macht fails to reap the flag as anticipated.

The dialogues or more accurately, monologues allotted to actors are performed lethally especially by Pacino on latter stages. But this is a drop in the ocean. Even an actor with a caliber like such cannot save this sinking ship that the screenplay is. Donaldson's vision is frankly blurred and undercooked to create the anticipated impact. The Recruit literally recruits you through its concept but this job calls for a labour work and not your promised white collar job.