The recruit was one of those movies where El Pacino was the only major factor in accumulating some business. The movie is criticized for having an obvious and predictable storyline and the only reason why the movie was some sort of success was because of its start-studded cast consisting of El Pacino and Colin Farrell (who had shot to stardom in 2000).

Directed by Roger Donaldstone, the movie revolves around the story of James Clayton (played by Farrell, who is an MIT graduate working as a bartender, who gets recruited by the CIA. Clayton has had a history of someone who has been obsessed by the sudden disappearance and later the death of his father under mysterious circumstances. This guy, therefore, proves to be the perfect mark for a recruit.

This answer seeking technocrat is picked up by Walter Burke (played by El Pacino) as part of a team which is supposed to handle a mission concerned with a supercharged computer virus capable of causing large-scale corruption of data worldwide. Farrell’s otherwise untapped talent has been explored in this movie when he, along with his fellow recruit Layla (played by Bridget Moyahnan), are trained intensively at the “farm”.

Although the story line of the movie is pretty obvious, but Pacino’s immaculate style and the way with which he circumlocutes lectures and crunch situations does add a bit of suspense to the story, but on the whole, the movie and the storyline in general, is pretty normal and standard.

The addition of the cliché “nothing is as it seems” has been deliberately made, so to speak, in order to increase the level of involvement of the audience. This has not only heightened the obviousness of the plot but also undermined character development at some vital places. On the whole, the movie has nothing new to the genre it deals with except for a scintillating (yet tired) performance by El Pacino coupled with the fervor of Colin Farrell.