THE Recruit is a movie which only really works on one level depending on whether you like your espionage thrillers or not, but will probably quickly forget all the same.

Colin Farrell plays a smart college graduate recruited by Al Pacino for the CIA and trained up with other raw recruits for the anonymous world of bluff and double bluff he is about to enter.

Farrell's characters is eventually assigned to track a mole played by Bridget Moynahan, working in the CIA headquarters and one who he's got more than a passing personal interest in.

The early agent training scenes are enjoyable and the plot unravels quickly thereafter until it's time to work out what the clearly impending twist is going to be.

Though Farrell and Pacino are excellent, their characters, like all others in the film, are essentially unlikeable, but not in an interesting way.

As such the film becomes a disposable piece of entertainment which only really succeeds on a linear plot level and becomes redundant once you've seen it.

There was some good stuff on the CIA recruitment process in the accompanying documentary though.

JS