Avis Metacritic

As a thriller, The Recruit is merely an entertaining ride. But remember: Nothing is what it seems. It's the subtext -- two actors from different generations faking each other out with skill and affection -- that counts.

Visibly uninspired, Pacino gives a perfunctory performance -- though surely he must have looked over at Farrell and been reminded of himself 30 years ago, all jacked-up and beautiful, like a stallion at the gate.

It's the kind of movie you can sit back and enjoy, as long as you don't make the mistake of thinking too much.

There's nothing excessively problematical with The Recruit that excising the final fifteen minutes wouldn't cure.

Just the latest forgettable thriller that might have been enjoyable if only its conclusion lived up to its windup.

But by the end the audience, along with Clayton, has been jerked around so many times that it's almost too exhausting...By then, it's almost impossible to care.

No matter how seriously everyone works to make the CIA impossibly sexy, the illusion that these pencil pushers are incarnations of Bond, James Bond, is difficult to sustain.

For the most part it's a completely ordinary, completely familiar, professionally executed film. Nothing truly awful, but nothing unexpected, either.

A less-than-middling melodrama whose subject matter and talent never click as much as its credits portend.

For most of this movie, things are exactly what they seem--mediocre.