starring Al Pacino, Colin Farrell, Bridget Moynaham and Gabriel Macht
written by Roger Towne, Kurt Wimmer and Mitch Glazer
directed by Roger Donaldson
I have been seeing Colin Farrell more and more in recent months. At first it was accidental, but now I think I am seeking him out. And Al Pacino - well, who wouldn’t watch an Al Pacino movie no matter how good/bad it is?
Pacino plays a CIA recruiter who picks Colin Farrell for training at “The Farm.” He trains, but is later rejected and given a humble data processing job (glorified typist) at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia instead. It’s a trick, though, because what Pacino is really doing is playing Farrell as a double agent to spy on another new (female) recruit who is suspected of being a double agent herself, stealing information out of CIA headquarters. Here is the suspense in the story: who is the real double? Who do you believe and who can you trust? (Remember Fox Mulder’s mantra on “The X-Files,” “Trust no one.”) What a lousy way to live. The fact that Farrell is a man and his mark is a young, attractive woman injects the inevitable love complication. So it’s a spy story, a love story, and an action film.
But it is a suspense story, so there has to be an exciting twist - and here it is. It turns out that Pacino lied to Farrell about the other agent spying on the CIA. He is using her to smuggle information out of Langley so that he, himself, can sell it to get that wealthy nest egg that his meager government civil service salary doesn’t provide. There is an old man bitterness to it. A guy busts his butt for the Agency for thirty years and all he has for his work is a $70,000 salary, a small house, and a ten-year-old car. Facing retirement, it’s not enough, so he is driven to treasonous espionage. As a former CIA field agent he has a wealth of subterfuge techniques at his disposal to frame Farrell for his crime. He almost gets away with it, too. But in the end Farrell is just a little cleverer than Pacino thought. He manages to turn tables on the old pro and save himself in the final scenes.