BEFORE: This week seems to be all about films with two main characters, so after the Brendan Gleeson chain, I'll follow-up with his co-star - Colin Farrell carries over from "In Bruges".
THE PLOT: A brilliant young CIA trainee is asked by his mentor to help find a mole in the Agency.
AFTER: Yep, it seems like this one's falling right in step, with two main characters - one a grizzled, possibly jaded veteran, the other a brash, headstrong rookie. I don't know what to call this scenario, the "Odd Couple" effect, perhaps, but that makes it sound too comedic. I suppose if you're a writer, you've got to be proud of yourself if you write a screenplay with one solid, original, interesting character. Jack Reacher, say, or James Bond. It follows that writing a screenplay with two original and interesting leads would be the next logical step, yet twice as difficult - especially since they must be similar, yet also somehow distinct.
Jeez, if I follow that line of reasoning, then a film like last year's "The Avengers" pulled off an incredible feat, with no fewer than 6 lead characters, plus a villain. But I guess 50 years of comic books helped make all the characters distinct and interesting. Still, if juggling two balls is easy, and three balls is a challenge, then what is 6?
But being able to spot these patterns, due to juxtaposing similar films on successive nights, does cause another problem for me - it's making me believe that different actors are just being inserted into the same scenarios, over and over. Like different materials being poured into the same molds - or new batters going into the same waffle irons, day after day, producing the same shape. Oh, the taste is a little different each day, but even with different flavors, try eating waffles every morning for, say, four and a half years, and you might be struck by the overarching sameness of it all.
Still, this film does offer something original - a peek inside "The Farm", aka the C.I.A. training facility. I assume it's not a look inside the REAL facility, but it's as close as moviegoers can expect. So we see how an agent is recruited, trained, and then assigned to a job - some get desk jobs, some work in the field. And one supposedly becomes a "NOC", or a non-official cover operative.
But it's too bad that the training sequences were the best part of the film - it feels a bit like the screenwriters thought they needed more, so they concocted a scenario with an unlikely MacGuffin, and then tried for a fake-out. I say "tried" because when the truth is revealed at the end, many of the actions that took place in the middle no longer make much sense. It's one thing to create two original distinct characters, but you've then got to give them something important to do, besides play little mind games with each other.
Also starring Al Pacino (last seen in "Carlito's Way"), Bridget Moynihan (last seen in "Battle Los Angeles"), Gabriel Macht (last seen in "Love & Other Drugs")
RATING: 6 out of 10 lines of code
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