Final
Destination 2 Will Tickle You to Death
Final
Destination 2 Will Tickle You to Death
I often do impressions of some of my favorite actors. Not good ones, mind you.
But I think they're funny. Mostly, I just do them to myself in private, usually
as I'm driving in my car. My favorites include Sean Connery, Worf and
Sulu from Star Trek, and Chris Burke from Life Goes On.
One of my absolute favorites is the latter-day Al Pacino, who goes from
being this hangdog, too-tired-to-get-the-words-out old guy in his most recent
roles to a screaming, maniacal wild man when he's called upon to get dramatic.
Think Any Given Sunday. Think Devil's Advocate. Think Insomnia.
And you have some great, great cheese to quote.
My favorite Pacino role from recent years is the burned-out cop he played in
Heat. There's this great moment where he is interrogating Hank Azaria
who he suspects is sleeping with a local criminal's wife. Azaria says something
like, "Why would I do that?" To which, my man Alfredo inexplicably
screams back at him, "BECAUSE SHE'S GOT A GREAT ASS! AND YOU GOT YOUR HEAD
ALL THE WAY UP IT!" That just kills me everytime I see it. And, yes, I
get the strangest looks from people driving by me on the highway when I'm doing
those lines on the road. You gotta get pretty animated when you're doing Pacino.
I just love the guy. So even though I had very few expectations of his new thriller,
The Recruit, I was at least looking forward to some new quotable lines
from my man.
Alas, this was the first of many disappointments Read on.
The Recruit is one of those movies that thinks it's a lot more clever
than it actually is. Pacino stars as Walter Burke, a former CIA field operative
whose seen it all and done it all, and now it is his job to train young agents.
Colin Farrell, Tom Cruise's nemesis in Minority Report,
plays the title character of James Clayton, a young and brilliant recruit eager
to follow in his father's footsteps and become a top spy. His progress might
become impeded, though, by his immediate attraction to Layla (Bridget Moynihan),
another top recruit who may or may not be a spy already for "the enemy."
The best thing I can say about The Recruit is that it is slick, soulless
Hollywood entertainment. It has a terrific first half, as Farrell, Moynihan,
and a bunch of forgettable extras are trained on "The Farm," the code
word for the wooded training facility where CIA agent wannabes are taught everything
from beating lie detectors to planting bugs to surviving torture. As most of
you know, I'm a sucker for good spy junk (The Bourne Identity was one
of my favorite movies of 2002) and this look inside the near-mythic "Farm"
was just fascinating.
It's the rest of the movie that fell apart for me. The assignment part.
Burke wants to use James and Layla's attraction to one another to the CIA's
advantage. The two are given jobs at agency headquarters in Langley, Va. Burke
believes that Layla is somehow stealing a top secret computer virus, even though
HQ allows no hard drives or printers and has one of the tightest security systems
in the world. James, being a former computer nerd, appears to be the top man
for the job.
In its last hour, the movie fails on several levels. One, there never seems
to be anything truly important at stake. Whereas the first half of the film
had a rhythm to it and even moments of humor and poignancy (Pacino does have
one terrific speech about the CIA where he tells his class of recruits, "Our
failures are known to the world. Our successes are known to no one"), the
second half is mostly Farrell staring intensely at computer screens and ho-hum
stuff like swiping security cards, hacking into systems, and uploading and downloading
files.
Two, and this is the film's ultimate downfall, I never really believed in the
"love" between James and Layla.Their feelings for each other are supposed
to be so intense that neither can do their job adequately. The two have chemistry,
but not THAT much chemistry. The part of Layla needed a stronger, sexier actress.
A femme fatale type. Moynihan is too much the good girl next door, and our sympathy
for James is constantly undone by the fact that we just never fully believe
his internal conflict.
Third, if you have seen the commercials and trailers for the film, you already
know one of the main plot twists that takes place in the last 10 minutes. Throughout
the entire running time, we're constantly being told by Pacino and other CIA
types in authority that "nothing is as it seems." So, you know a twist
is coming. You can feel it coming a mile away. After a while, you realize the
storyline can go one of several ways all at the whim of the screenwriters. To
Hell with whether it makes compelling, dramatic sense.
Even worse, the simplistic job that James is given ultimately could have been
done by any CIA operative, and the character should be smart enough to know
that, but he isn't. Essentially, all James does is log onto Layla's work computer,
then onto her home computer to see which files she has stolen. All any agent
would have to do is wait until after hours at the office to get the same data,
or wait until she has left her home to sneak in and do exactly what Farrell
does. There would be no need for a personal relationship to get this kind of
information. Ridiculous!
I briefly had high hopes for The Recruit when I saw during the opening
credits that it was directed by Roger Donaldson. Donaldson directed No
Way Out, one of the premier government spy thrillers of the 1980s. It was
a devious, hypnotic, little mind game that saw Kevin Costner (in his
best performance ever) on the trail of a Russian spy within the Pentagon who
he knows is being set up for the murder of the Secretary of Defense's mistress.
How does he know? Because he was also the woman's lover, and the one piece of
evidence against the supposed "Yuri"--a half-developed photograph,
found in the murder woman's home--was of himself. The film ended with one of
the sweetest, most diabolical twists ever perpetrated on an audience.
Donaldson is trying for the same vibe here, but he is undone by some weak casting
and even weaker writing. No Way Out was about adults in an increasingly
tense, always believable pressure cooker situation. The only real tension in
The Recruit was in me wondering how Colin Farrell was able to keep the
exact same beard-stubble growth throughout the entire movie. I wanted to give
the kid a razor and tell him to go apply for a job in the private sector.
Hey, Colin repeat after me, "Dude, you're gettin' a Dell!"
The Recruit is rated PG-13 for violence, language, and sexual
situations.
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