Belated New Year to you!

In between the world of grade A action films such as the first Matrix film and straight to video hell such as Steven Segal's last few, there lies within the grade C action flick.

Neither good nor bad, their plots, music, and premise are nothing more than a composite of what has worked in years' past and cobbled together to make a passable product to lure dateless men out of their homes on a Friday night.

And here I am a woman watching it!  Take that, Betty Crocker!

Sorry about that pandering feminist dogma I just spewed.  I even annoyed myself with that.

Well, ok, I didn't hunt it down, but I saw The Recruit on video last night. 

The name alone spells out the sheer mediocrity you are about to see.  Nothing beats an innocuous title that they are banking on the voice over guy for the trailer to make sound daring and sinister.

"It will be 'the recruit', but that guy who does voice-overs will say, "GET READY FOR THE RECRUIT" and it will be the wildest shit yet!  And people will come and see it!"

In these films, they always take an oldie but goodie who is either past their prime or can't score the A list action flick, but still command a level of respect that puts the stamp of quality upon it.  That person usually plays the investigator in charge. 

They are always paired up with the up and comer.  Like Virtuosity had Russell Crowe, so The Recruit has Colin Farrell.  The pretty boy that will give women something to look at and not object too loudly should anyone else want to see it, even if their brain is telling them that this is a stupid movie.

It is a stupid movie.  It asks the audience to believe that some guy who sleeps in late and almost misses the tech fair he has entered in is actually the material that the CIA eyes for its top missions. 

That's my big quibble.  There are no stakes involved.  Its not like he was a hacker who was offered a deal to keep from going to prison.  Matter of fact, in one scene where he is trying to elude police because they are trying to find a murderer matching his description, he does the daring move of….running into the bathroom and turning his jacket inside out so that he will have a red one instead of a black one!  Wow!  Ethan Hunt stand back because you've met your match!

Al Pacino is given the roll of CIA instructor who supervises Farrell's career from the ground up. 

Which draws me to another plot device that always kills me:  telephones. 

In every last one of these movies, telephones are a big part of the plot.  If the telephone hadn't been invented, I suppose that the genre of action/thriller would never have been born.

There are lots of scenes with people on the phone.  Matter of fact, a large event that happens in the movie is due to a cell phone. 

It's silly and dull, but not bad enough for straight to video.  I suppose the stars of the film prevented that possibility.

The Recruit

….Where are the Russians when you need 'em?