Like the Robert Redford-Brad Pitt blockbuster
Spy Game, this Hollywood love letter to the CIA casts an aging icon (Al Pacino) as a jaded company man schooling a sharp young hunk (Colin Farrell) in the ways of espionage. And like the earlier film, it milks the characters' father-son relationship for drama without making the fairly obvious connection to the agency's paternalistic view of the world. Directed by Roger Donaldson (
Thirteen Days), this cloak-and-dagger adventure fires on all cylinders for the first hour or so, as Pacino recruits Farrell—a whiz kid at MIT whose father died while serving in the agency—to uncover a mole in the CIA training program at Langley. The story becomes progressively more dubious, however, and the ending isn't much of a surprise. 105 min.
By
J.R. Jones
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