Keep guessing in ‘Recruit;’ ‘Darkness’ fails to see light

Good performances found in ‘Recruit’

A father dies in a mysterious accident. A son searches for the

truth. The son is a young man fresh out of college, full of questions

and highly skilled in computer programming. Enter Walter Burke, a CIA

recruiter and self-proclaimed scary judge of talent.

Come and work with us, James, he tells the young man. This work is

in you. Just like your father. “My father, CIA?” James thinks, but he

has obviously thought this before. That is all it takes to hook

James. Off he goes to the Farm, a CIA training facility. James

Clayton is “The Recruit.”

There are two rules:

1. Don’t trust anyone.

2. Nothing is what is seems.

Burke tells James that Layla, another recruit, is a mole. Get

close to her and find out whom she’s giving the secrets to. James

doesn’t want to, but he needs to know the truth about his father. But

this game is not about truth; all Burke has is secrets.

James befriends Layla, and he doesn’t want to believe what Burke

is saying, doesn’t want to believe what he is seeing. Burke is cruel

to him. Layla plays games and tricks him. Are his friends the enemy?

Is his teacher?

Confused yet? Hopefully. That’s what Touchstone Pictures and Roger

Donaldson want you to be. “The Recruit” is low on information and

high in speed. Don’t think, just act.

Colin Farrell, the young Irish “it guy,” is the lion jumping

through hoops, and Al Pacino is the circus ringmaster. Pacino is a

great puppeteer, pulling the right strings at the perfect moment.

He’s humorous and inviting one minute and then shuts you out the

next. No one knows where he or she stands with Walter Burke.

It’s no wonder that James is always confused and one step behind

the game. The script calls for Farrell to woo the girl, find the bad

guy and save the day all by himself -- on a deadline that is fast

approaching. Clayton runs the gamut of personas: cocky, suspicious,

happy, suave, confused, beaten, and triumphant, all in less than two

hours. It’s an amusing and impressive thing to see.

There is “the girl,” played well by Bridget Moynahan. She’s almost

as good a puppeteer as Pacino. The whole time she’s a question mark.

Is she good? Is she bad?

And there is an adversary for James, lest things become too easy

for him. Zack is always at Layla’s side, speaking to her in foreign

languages and never letting James get a moment alone. Zack thwarts

James at every turn and then smirks about it. The role is easily

mastered by Gabriel Macht. He deserves a much more difficult

character.

“The Recruit” has all the right pieces: mystery, tension,

devilishly handsome stars and a good pace. The only problem is the

ending. It could have and should have been better.

But that’s just a little lapse. “The Recruit” is a good case of

mental gymnastics and lots of fun. But that’s only my opinion.

Remember, don’t trust anyone, nothing is what it seems.

* MELISSA RICHARDSON is a Costa Mesa resident and a UC Irvine

student.

‘Darkness Falls’ falls short of great horror

Is there anything worse than a bad horror film? Yes, a bad horror

film that could have been great.

Although some might disagree, “Darkness Falls” could have been a

decent chiller. It has a great villain, an ominous spirit that preys

upon the innocent folks of a small New England town, Darkness Falls.

It has sympathetic heroes, including a man haunted since childhood by

the monster who orphaned him (Chaney Kley), a young woman struggling

to protect her little brother (Emma Caulfield of “Buffy the Vampire

Slayer”) and a little boy whom the monster has recently targeted for

a most horrible death (Lee Cormie).

Sounds great, right? Wrong. It’s missing something important. Let

me see if I can put my finger on it. Oh yeah, a compelling storyline.

The film starts out with promise, spinning a yarn reminiscent of a

spooky tale told around the campfire.

More than 150 years ago, old Matilda Dixon would give children

coins in return for their baby teeth and earned herself the nickname

“Tooth Fairy.” Well, poor Matilda was horribly disfigured in a fire

and became the town recluse. One night, two children didn’t come

home, and the town lynched Matilda for murder. Before her neck was

stretched, Matilda cursed the town. And from that day on, the

murderous ghost of Matilda would take her revenge on the children of

Darkness Falls.

Spooky, huh? Too bad this train derails shortly after it leaves

the station. The story picks up again 12 years ago, when the Tooth

Fairy kills Kyle Walsh’s mother after he sees the vengeful spirit

taking his last baby tooth. As if that weren’t bad enough, Kyle is

accused of committing the murder and sent to the loony bin.

Next stop is present day, when we find Kyle’s childhood

sweetheart, Kaitlin, dealing with her young brother’s seemingly

irrational fear of the Tooth Fairy. She makes a desperate plea for

Kyle to return, which doesn’t make any sense because she and the rest

of the town still believe that he killed his mother.

The rest of the film is spent by them trying to evade the wrathful

wraith by shining flashlights at it. Old Matilda can’t stand the

light, a holdover from when she was alive and her burned skin was

sensitive to the sun. Yeah, I know that doesn’t really make any

sense, either.

If I had to list all of the dumb rules and inconsistencies that

this movie contains, I’d take up the whole paper and too much of your

time. And I won’t even go into the tired cheap scares that are

scattered throughout.

This could have been a great horror franchise, and maybe they will

do better next time. You can be sure there will be a sequel, as this

dud was No. 1 at the box office on its opening weekend thanks to a

lot of bored teenagers. So take my word for it, and wait for a review

of “Darkness Falls 2.”

* RYAN GILMORE is a Costa Mesa resident and movie fan.