Kevin Costner became a huge star thanks in part to 1987's No Way Out, a glossy, sexy thriller set in and around Washington's espionage circles. Out's director, Roger Donaldson, tries to repeat the magic with the heavily hyped Farrell in The Recruit, an equally glossy, less sexy film with a similar setting and subject matter. It doesn't work, though it's not for lack of trying or celluloid oomph on Farrell's part. Recruit simply isn't clever enough; its plot twists can be glimpsed a spy satellite's length away.
"Nothing is what it seems," Central Intelligence Agency recruiter Walter Burke (Pacino) portentously warns several times, as if goosing the audience into paying attention. It's a lesson our hero, MIT computer whiz James Clayton (Farrell, see page 73), is slow to learn. At Burke's urging, Clayton signs up with the CIA and begins its training program. There are spies amid the spies, however, and an imperiled Clayton must figure out whom he can trust before it's too late.
Farrell, whose compact good looks and intense, moist-eyed gaze bespeak major movie star charisma, delivers his sturdiest performance since blazing to notice in 2000's Tigerland. A weary-looking Pacino takes another run at playing a seductive Mephistopheles, recycling his blustery turn from 1997's The Devil's Advocate. (PG-13)
BOTTOM LINE: Only a semi-successful recruiting job
Heather Graham, Jimi Mistry
Inspired more by John Travolta in Grease than the whirling Bollywood musicals he sat through as a boy, a dance instructor (Mistry) comes to New York City from India in pursuit of showbiz glory. He hits bottom when he lands a part in a porn film, then lucks into celebrity when he poses as a swami at a society party. Parroting the coaching tips of his porn costar (Graham), he is hailed as a prophet whose message rises up from the erogenous zone. Of all the nirvana!
These strained farcical contrivances never let up—by day the porn star poses as a grade-school teacher to fool her firefighter fiancé—until they strangle the movie, like a snake grown too long and tangled to be charmed. The one performance with any spontaneity is Marisa Tomei's. As a spoiled rich girl who becomes the guru's pupil and attains true spiritual wisdom, she smiles with sweet, pained humility beneath an ill-fitting turban. She's unexpectedly touching. (R)
BOTTOM LINE: Omm-barrassing
A.J. Cook, Ali Larter
Death keeps his short, grim nose to the grindstone, painstakingly devising ingenious new booby traps to slice, dice, flambé and impale his victims, in this playfully diabolical sequel to the 2000 teen horror hit. It's practically the same movie, in fact. But sequels, like death, needn't be proud.
Terrified by a premonition of a bloody pileup as she heads onto the highway, a young woman named Kimberly (Cook) blocks the ramp with her SUV, saving the half dozen or so drivers honking behind her when the vision proves true. Death promptly cooks up a new plan. As the motorists start dropping like ducks flying over a hunting lodge, she seeks out a survivor from the first Destination (Larter), who tells her to look for telltale hints of impending doom—"ironic, in-your-face stuff." More like tongue-in-cheek fun. (R)
BOTTOM LINE: Dead on
>•Biker Boyz The Fast and the Furious with half the wheels. Derek Luke challenges Laurence Fishburne for motorcycle-gang supremacy, but there's no dramatic horsepower. (PG-13)
•Chicago Our kind of film, Chicago is. A razzle-dazzle musical about crime, celebrity and show business. Renée Zellweger, Richard Gere and Catherine Zeta-Jones star. (PG-13)
•The Hours Three women (Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep) from different eras struggle to be happy. Well acted. (PG-13)
•Max A German-Jewish art dealer (John Cusack) befriends aspiring artist Adolf Hitler (Noah Taylor, a feral wonder) in 1918. Provocative. (R)
- Contributors:
- Tom Gliatto.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
