‘The Recruit’: Slick entertainment, yet restrained

In theaters

THE RECRUIT, directed by Roger Donaldson, written by Roger Towne, Kurt Wimmer and Michael Glazer, 105 minutes, rated PG-13.

The new Roger Donaldson movie, “The Recruit,” stars Al Pacino as Walter Burke, a senior instructor at the Central Intelligence Agency who finds in young computer whiz James Clayton (Colin Farrell) the perfect recruit for the CIA.

Brilliant, brash and brooding, his 5 o’clock shadow as formidable and as abrasive as anything that ever clouded the jaw lines of Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clayton is Grade-A CIA stock – even if he doesn’t initially know it.

What he has going for him beyond his brains and his smoky espionage looks is his need for a father figure, which Burke immediately recognizes as he takes Clayton under his wing, lures him away from a potential job at Dell Computer and convinces him to become the CIA agent his father never was.

You know, the kind who doesn’t get killed in the line of duty, as Clayton’s dad was in 1990.

The film, from a script by Roger Towne, Kurt Wimmer and Michael Glazer, is slick entertainment that’s surprisingly restrained, initially forgoing the genre’s usual penchant for over-the-top explosions and chase scenes to focus on character, a welcome reprieve that serves to tighten the suspense.

The film complicates matters for Clayton when he agrees to take Burke up on his offer. Indeed, when Clayton is shipped to The Farm – the infamous CIA training facility in Virginia where spies aren’t hatched, but grown (and apparently bullied and bludgeoned) – he meets and falls hard for Layla (Bridget Moynahan), a hot-to-trot spy in the making who might not be who she seems. In fact, nobody here is ever what they seem, which Burke unfortunately reminds us a bit too often but which, nevertheless, is the point of these films.

To Donaldson’s credit, he makes “The Recruit” seem reasonably fresh and limber in spite of its plot holes and pat ending. When he eventually employs the conventions of the espionage thriller – such as car chases and gun fights – he doesn’t overdo it and, as a result, his movie doesn’t become a cartoon.

Especially good are the performances, which get to the heart of why “The Recruit” works as well as it does. Indeed, Pacino, Farrell and Moynahan all work to involve us emotionally in their characters. For instance, when Clayton and Layla fall for each other, you sense there’s something truly at

stake, which gives the film the same unexpected lift and depth that Matt Damon and Franka Potente enjoyed in the equally good “The Bourne Identity.”

Grade: B

On video and DVD

IGBY GOES DOWN, Written and directed by Burr Steers, 97 minutes, rated R.

Burr Steers’ “Igby Goes Down” is enough to make even the most troubled, dysfunctional group – like Saddam and his senate – seem fun and light-hearted in comparison.

Just look at what it has to offer: a self-destructive, schizophrenic father locked away in a mental institution. An abusive, pill-popping mother so self-absorbed, she could double as a sponge. A high-living, heroin-addicted hooker who just wants to be loved.

At the center of it all is poor Igby Slocum (Kieran Culkin), a bright yet aimless 17-year-old boy whose biting wit is reminiscent of Salinger’s Holden Caufield, but who, you sense, has a bit more of a backbone.

The film, which is like “The Royal Tenenbaums” without the quirks, is caustic and dark – and often blisteringly funny. It’s also surprisingly moving and affecting, a movie about a shattered, upper-class family on hard times whose emotional wounds run so deep, they’ll likely never heal, so why bother trying to fix them? At least that’s Igby’s philosophy.

The film stars Susan Sarandon as Mimi Slocum, a hateful shrew who poisons her sons, Igby and the older Oliver (Ryan Phillippe), with the sort of love that inspires Igby to call her the Heinous One, apparently because “Medea was already taken.”

When Igby is kicked out of his umpteenth private school and becomes the official Slocum slacker, he decides he can’t bear his mother’s insults any longer and pushes to find a way out.

At a party in the Hamptons thrown by his sleazy godfather, D.H. (Jeff Goldblum), Igby befriends two women – the druggy society girl Rachel (Amanda Peet) and the down-to-earth Sookie Sapperstein (Claire Danes) – who help him to see his world for what it is so he can have the power to break free.

While the film is filled with excellent performances, the standout being Culkin, its momentum comes from wondering which way Igby will go. Will he succumb to his situation as his father (Bill Pullman) did and “go down,” as the title suggests? Or will life give him a second chance? It takes a murder-suicide to tip the balance in his favor.

Grade: A

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Tuesdays and Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.