The Recruit
Buena Vista Pictures | Release Date: January 31, 2003 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
56
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
19
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
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. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Probably better than anyone else working today, Donaldson knows how to knit a thriller. Each time you think this taut yarn is about to unravel, that's when he pulls the wool over your eyes. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleCarla Meyer
A labyrinthine brain twister. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
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. Read full review
70
L.A. WeeklyChuck Wilson
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. Read full review
70
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Compelling, if throwaway, drama. Read full review
70
VarietyTodd McCarthy
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 inner-office romance at the CIA. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
There's nothing excessively problematical with The Recruit that excising the final fifteen minutes wouldn't cure. Read full review
63
New York PostLou Lumenick
May have a storyline as generic as its title, but in the explosive Pacino and the smoldering Farrell (who nearly stole "Minority Report" from Tom Cruise), it has a pair of stars who are not as easily dismissed. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Not even Pacino can save it. Read full review
63
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
So much is so good about The Recruit that you'll wish the ending were better. It's like opening the last lid in a Chinese box and having a clown figure pop out on a spring. Read full review
63
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
By contemporary standards, The Recruit is a halfway decent spy melodrama -- at least to the halfway point. Read full review
63
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
One of many small reasons to like The Recruit is that it pays homage to Kurt Vonnegut, a forgotten old lion of literature. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Pacino, thankfully, is on-screen enough to keep this stew on a solid low boil. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldConnie Ogle
The sort of movie you enjoy much more while you're watching it in the theater than when you're deconstructing it on the way home. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
It suddenly morphs into one more overly slick, empty show. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
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. Read full review
60
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Just the latest forgettable thriller that might have been enjoyable if only its conclusion lived up to its windup. Read full review
60
Dallas ObserverAndy Klein
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. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesManohla Dargis
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. Read full review
60
The New York TimesDana Stevens
Like Christopher Walken or Marlon Brando, Mr. Pacino frequently uses his gifts to make mediocre movies more interesting. Everything else in The Recruit may be tiresomely predictable, but he, at least, is not. Read full review
60
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
It milks the characters' father-son relationship for drama without making the fairly obvious connection to the agency's paternalistic view of the world. Read full review
60
Film ThreatKevin Carr
There are glimpses of a real actor struggling to get out of Pacino, although they are rare. It’s as if Pacino is dying to act, but he’s either too old or director Roger Donaldson just isn’t allowing him to do it. Read full review
60
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
Spare, sleek and coolly entertaining, even if there's less to this game of true lies than meets the eye. Read full review
58
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
It's just never as gripping as it needs to be. Read full review
50
USA TodayMike Clark
A less-than-middling melodrama whose subject matter and talent never click as much as its credits portend. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
For most of this movie, things are exactly what they seem--mediocre.
50
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Donaldson and his battery of screenwriters aim for nothing more than a coolly efficient thrill machine, but the mechanics break down in the end, foiled by a "whodunit" twist that's telegraphed early in the first reel. Careening forward without any real purpose, the film simply flies off the rails. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
The first half packs some clever surprises, but eventually you'll wish you'd signed up with another movie. Read full review
50
Washington PostStephen Hunter
It's nothing but style and noise, threadbare of content, empty of ideas. Is it anything? Not really. Read full review
50
SlateDavid Edelstein
The Recruit is like vaudeville night at Bellevue. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
The pleasure of watching two alpha males -– Al Pacino and Colin Farrell -– circling each other mano a mano substantially beefs up this otherwise routine spy thriller. Read full review
50
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
For the most part it's a completely ordinary, completely familiar, professionally executed film. Nothing truly awful, but nothing unexpected, either. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Al Pacino is his own venue as yet another flamboyant, self-ironic, self-dramatizing, self-parodying, self-selfing quasi-Mephistopheles. His performance isn't very good, but it's big.
40
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
Cliché-density aside, Roger Donaldson's perfectly rote movie is childishly naive about the reality of the CIA as it stands in the official record and in the public mindset. Read full review
40
The New YorkerDavid Denby
The Recruit is quick and tense, and some of it is fun, but I didn't believe a single thing in it, and the over-all effect of the movie is to make one depressed that the Christmas "art" season is over. [27 January 2003, p. 94]
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