Movie of the week is “The Recruit”:

actually I only saw this movie because there weren’t any other good ones playing this week… and so my motivation wasn’t very high. Plus it starrs Al Pacino who is certainly a good actor but still I can’t help disliking him. Pacino’s role is that of veteran CIA recruiter Burke who hires Clayton (Colin Farrell) for the Agency. He is using Clayton’s father as a bait to lure him into “The Farm”, the Agency’s training facility, and Clayton soon has to find out everything is a test – including his romance with fellow trainee Layla (Bridget Moynahan). Or is it? Is he working for the CIA or does Layla tell the truth when she says he has changed allegiance…?
“Kinda good, kinda bad” describes the movie best. Towards the end, the plot speeds up a bit which is desperately needed after various slow parts in the middle, and weren’t it an important plot device, I could have lived without Burke’s grand speech in the end.
Colin Farrell does his best and can convey Clayton’s confusion and pain quite convincingly, though he should refrain from channeling Bullseye too much ;) . Bridget Moynahan is too bland to really evoke interest and thereby becomes interchangeable, Al Pacino delivers good work but tends to overact a bit, too, sometimes.
I enjoyed the music which sounded a lot like “The Italian Job”, and cinematography was good average. The script had some serious problems getting into the story and showed us far too many pointless car conversations instead of action – with the way the movie was advertised, this was a mistake. Most of the twists were so obvious either me or my friend predicted them correctly 99% of the time, so minus points for the plot’s orginality. On the whole, not bad but could have been better – 3 out of 6 Meeps.