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The Recruit is a spy thriller movie starring Colin Farrell and Al Pacino. It was released in 2003. It follows the career of a recent MIT graduate recruited into the CIA.
Plot detailsSpoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
The Recruit sits somewhat distinguished in the espionage genre as it details the process of conversion of James Clayton (Colin Farrell) from fairly ordinary MIT final year student, into an intelligence officer with the CIA.
The program, called SPARTACUS, impresses a previously skeptical grad recruiter for Dell, and it appears that James' future is on track. Later that night, when James is working his casual job as a bartender in the UniBar, he sees Walter Burke (Al Pacino), who he had previously noticed hanging around at the careers fair. The two begin talking during which time Burke intimates to Clayton that he is in fact a CIA recruiter. James, however, is not interested and Burke walks away, casually revealing to James a familiarity with his Father. At this, James becomes intrigued and decides to attend the interview and selection process for the CIA's clandestine service. Upon arriving at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Clayton takes part in numerous assessments including psychometric, numerical reasoning, psychological, psychoanalytical, aptitude, and a polygraph test. Particular attention is given to the apparent obscurity of many of the questions in the psychological examination, providing an insight into just how complicated the screening for intelligence officers in the CIA actually is. A specific example would be when the psychoanalyst asks James "Quickly! Would you rather ride on a train, dance in the rain, or feel no pain?", to which Clayton responds that he'd rather dance in the rain but changes his answer to 'feel no pain'. During the testing he meets Layla Moore (Bridget Moynahan).
Image:07recruit.jpg Clayton on training. Clayton and the other candidates then begin their training in covert ops and intelligence gathering. After one such day, it the recruits have a night off and several are sitting in their dorm room playing poker. At this point Clayton and Zach (Gabriel Macht) face off revealing the competitive nature of their relationship. Burke interrupts and takes the recruits present (all males) to a nearby bar for "drinks". Their actual purpose, however, is to conduct a training exercise with one simple objective: "to reach the parking lot with an asset who intends to have sex with [them]", in other words, to pick up a girl. James appears to do exceedingly well at first until he spots Layla, alone at a table, apparently quite inebriated. He abandons the girl to whom he was talking and Layla tells him that she was 'cut' from the program. James offers to call a cab for her as an act of sympathy, but Layla manages to draw him outside where, upon reaching the parking lot with her, James learns that actually she had a training mission of her own. Namely, to prevent him from completing his mission, at which she was successful. James gets his own back however when he embarrasses Layla during training in how to fool a polygraph machine. Here, he traps Layla into revealing her attraction to him. In doing this, he realizes that he has in fact hurt the one person with whom he had had romantic interests. Throughout the various stages of the training, the instructors become increasingly impressed by James' natural ability in the "black arts" of espionage such as weapons, classroom exercises and his ingenuity and fast thinking when he manages to escape from a botched training drill by dramatically jumping through a glass window. When he and Layla finally make up and Burke finds out about their romantic interest with one another, they are sent on a training exercise in counter-surveillance. During this exercise, James and Layla are kidnapped by men apparently from a foreign intelligence service. James is interrogated for several days in a dungeon-like cell and tortured. He is asked to give up the names of his instructors and holds out until one of his interrogators provides evidence that his defiance is contributing not only to his suffering, but also that of Layla. He yells out Burke's name and suddenly the rear wall of the cell rises up revealing that Burke, Layla and the other candidates sitting in the lecture theater had witnessed the entire event. James is informed that he has been cut from the program and is put up in a hotel in much the same fashion as was described to him by Layla when she had feigned the same fate. After proceeding to get thoroughly drunk, he makes a fool of himself by leaving a drunken message on the voicemail of the Dell recruiter, asking for a chance for employment. In the morning, however, Walter Burke arrives to tell him that he had feigned cutting James from training in order to appoint him as a non-official cover operative. (An intelligence officer who is not afforded the protection of diplomatic status when committing espionage.) Burke tells James that he has been paired with Layla in order to spy on her, as the CIA has evidence that she is a mole of a foreign intelligence service recruited to extract a top-secret new virus from the CIA. James reluctantly agrees and re-established contact with Layla, pretending to join the CIA as a low-level data-entry office worker and getting to know her. During this time, they become romantically involved and the tension is apparent when, after making love, Layla bugs James' coat with a listening device. James eventually uncovers proof that Layla is removing the virus from CIA laboratories piece by piece using a USB Flash Drive concealed in the bottom of a thermal coffee mug. He follows her to uncover the identities of her contacts and winds up pursuing one contact through a train station. The identity of the contact is concealed by his hooded jumper until James shoots him in a scuffle. Layla's contact turns out to be Zach, who dies almost straight away. James escapes the scene and confronts Layla with evidence of her treachery, demanding an explanation. She explains that, in fact, she and Zach had been commissioned by the CIA to test the security protocols of the facility by attempting to remove a "fake" virus. By virtue of his familiarity with computer programs, however, James suspects differently and confronts Burke with these contradictions at an abandoned warehouse. Burke, at first, congratulates Clayton on passing his final test. The virus, he says, wasn't real, nor is Zach dead. When Burke invites Clayton to shoot him with a gun which Burke supplied and which he says is actually filled with blanks, a tense moment ensues and Burke knocks the gun away, blowing out a car window. Burke chases Clayton through a warehouse, boasting that he organized the scheme in order to sell the virus. He also shatters James' hopes about his father by saying that the story that his father was a CIA agent was only a ruse to trick James into befriending Burke. Clayton agrees to give Burke the laptop containing the completed virus, and shows Burke the screen running his own software program Spartacus, apparently relaying Burke's entire confession back to CIA headquarters. Burke becomes incensed, chasing Clayton outside, where a SWAT team has assembled to track them down. Unbeknownst to Burke, however, Clayton's link to the CIA was a fake. In actual fact, the CIA had no knowledge of Burke's treachery and were there to arrest Clayton. Burke then proceeds to nail his own coffin by railing at his unjust treatment by the CIA. Upon discovering that he himself had foiled his own plan, he commits suicide-by-cop. Upon being driven back to CIA headquarters at Langley for debriefing, one of his other instructors again suggests that James' father in fact was a CIA officer by saying, cryptically, that "[spying] is in your blood." Spoilers end here.
Cast
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