The Recruit is a 2003 American spy thriller film directed by Roger Donaldson and starring Al Pacino, Colin Farrell and Bridget Moynahan. The film was produced by Spyglass Entertainment in association with Epsilon Motion Pictures and Place Productions, and released by Touchstone Pictures through Buena Vista Pictures Distribution on January 31, 2003. It received mixed reviews from critics, but grossed $101.2 million worldwide. The film was produced by Gary Barber's and Roger Birnbaum's production company Spyglass Entertainment, with financial support from Disney's Touchstone Pictures and German film financing company Epsilon Motion Pictures (which was owned by the Kirch Group at the time). Filming began on December 3, 2001. It was filmed mainly in Toronto and Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada, with some landmark scenes, such as that from the Iwo Jima Memorial by the Arlington National Cemetery, shot in and around Washington, D.C. The film's working title was The Farm. James Foley was considered to direct, but was replaced by Roger Donaldson before filming began.
A video game adaptation was proposed by Torus Games for BAM! Entertainment, but the game was retooled into Ice Nine before release.
Reception
Box office
The film was released on January 31, 2003, and earned $16.3 million in its first weekend, beating out Darkness Falls, Final Destination 2 and Biker Boyz to reach the number one spot. Its final gross was $52.8 million in the United States and $48.4 million internationally, for a total of $101.2 million. Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 56 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of B+ on a scale of A+ to F.
Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a positive review, with a B+ score. He wrote, "From the get-go, The Recruit is one of those thrillers that delights in pulling the rug out from under you, only to find another rug below that." Carla Meyer of San Francisco Chronicle gave a positive review to the film, stating Al Pacino and Colin Farrell "bring a wary curiosity to their early scenes, with Farrell displaying a palpable hunger for praise and Pacino a corresponding mastery of how to hook somebody by parceling out compliments. They're a swarthier version of Robert Redford and Brad Pitt in Spy Game–only The Recruit is more about mind games."
Todd McCarthy of Variety stated, "The whole picture may be hokey, but the first part is agreeably so, the second part not. At the very least, one comes away with a new appreciation of the difficulty of interoffice romance at the CIA." Mike Clark of USA Today gave a mixed review to the film, stating, "Nothing is ever what it seems, but still, nothing's very compelling in The Recruit, a less-than-middling melodrama whose subject matter and talent never click as much as its credits portend."
CIA reaction
In 2009, the movie was reviewed by new CIA employees, who wrote that although "everyone in the Agency believes the movie is ridiculous", the movie is "entertaining", and that "all of the covert service trainees watched the film on the bus going into training" for "comic relief". According to T.J. Waters (a former Farm student), The Recruit is "a mediocre movie" in which he "recognize[s] a lot of similarities with the real Farm".