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“Nothing is what it seems,” Al Pacino says early and often in The Recruit, Hollywood’s latest paint-by-numbers spy thriller. We can take it for granted, since in such spy thrillers nothing is ever what it seems. At least in the best ones, like No Way Out. Because the very nature of espionage and patriotic voyeurism implies deceit and surprise, we expect this and are delighted when we have been lured into thinking that we can believe our eyes. However, when our attention is so frequently drawn to the idea that we, as young, would-be CIA agents and audience members, can “trust no one,” we race ahead of the game and start figuring things out.

Colin Farrell is James Clayton, a rough-but-soft-around-the-edges computer whiz-kid whose fledgling software company has just developed a program that can invade interconnected computer systems. As he’s courting a potential buyer, he notices that he’s being watched by a mysterious, goateed stranger in the form of Walter Burke (Pacino) who makes an offer Clayton can’t refuse: Join the CIA. The pay is terrible, the work hard, and the rewards anonymous. But what fun! Intrigued, Clayton plays along partly to occupy his aimless (but formidable) intelligence and partly to find out the truth behind Burke’s assertion that Clayton’s beloved late father was an agent himself, killed on a mission and not in a random plane crash as was the official story.

But CIA-ing is hard and not without emotional expense. Clayton forges an instant chemistry with another trainee, Layla (The Sum of All Fears‘ Bridget Moynahan); they are pitted against each other by Burke to test their mettle and compatibility. Once it’s clear to all Burke, audience, each other that these two really do want to get it on, missions get assigned, and Clayton’s is to uncover a mole that has intercepted a potentially catastrophic computer program. Is Layla the mole? Is Clayton sleeping with the enemy? Which of these two intense young spies is the Mata Hari? Trust no one. Nothing is what it seems. And, according to this film, the CIA is as secure as a Circle K so, anything can happen.

The Recruit, I believe with some sincerity, is basically a star-making vehicle for the Who’s That Guy comer-of-the-moment, Colin Farrell. Having subtly upstaged the talents of Tom Cruise in Minority Report and Bruce Willis in Hart’s War, Farrell proves that he’s got the right stuff as a leading man, and The Recruit showcases all the right angles: cute and cuddly (as when he is missing his father), sexy (as when a security-camera-evading make-out waltz turns into a steamy throwdown), intense (anytime he tilts his head down and peers vulnerably with black laser eyes through decisive, angled eyebrows), tough (despite a few fights, his best jabs are at a punching bag). And he can hold his own against Pacino no easy feat. Pacino, incidentally, could make an industry of mentor films. Donnie Brasco and Scent of a Woman revealed an impressive ability to draw great work from the younger pups in those films Johnny Depp and Chris O’Donnell, respectively. He provides the same stewardship here, though suppressing his more bombastic scenery-chewing skills in favor of subtler underplay is a nice contrast to the intense and athletic demands of his ward, Farrell. It’s nice to see Pacino so at ease in a role, and in fact his work seems effortless, as in last year’s equally measured Insomnia. He is casual, tempered, always on the lookout but never losing his cool or showing his hand. This allows for a satisfying, even funny payoff at the end, where Burke’s mission is completed with unexpected results.

The Recruit succeeds in that it is appealing, with engaging stars, fine, swift pacing, and tense, moody cinematography. It will please most who see it, as most audiences have no problem checking their brains at the door. Discriminating viewers, however, will find that surprise is mightily outweighed by the humdrum of routine, and it’s a shame that the seasoned Pacino and vibrant Farrell have to generate all of the film’s sparks, with no particular help from the script. Bo List

Spanish director Pedro Almodovar probably gets American distribution and attracts U.S. audiences more consistently than any other foreign-language filmmaker. His films are colorful, flamboyant, erotic, and often screwball, smart and sexy yet somehow lighter than what many domestic filmgoers envision when contemplating the term “foreign film.” Almodovar’s latest, Talk to Her, combines two of his favorite topics: his devotion to and affection for women (see All About My Mother) and his penchant for casting an understanding eye on obsessive, borderline transgressive love (see Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down!).

The film opens inside a movie theater where two men, Benigno (Javier Camara) and Marco (Dario Grandinetti), sit next to one another and gaze at the screen showing two women walking in a stuporous state are they blind? are they sleepwalking? Two men scurry around pushing tables and chairs out of their way. Marco weeps at the show of devotion. Benigno, also moved, bears witness to Marco’s tears approvingly. The two men, at this point, have never met and are seated next to one another only by chance.

Afterward Benigno massages his object of devotion and desire and tells her about the man he saw at the movie. She does not respond and for good reason: She’s in a coma. Alicia (Leonor Watling) is a ballerina who was in a car accident four years ago and has been in a coma ever since. Benigno is a nurse at the private clinic where Alicia is kept and has been hired to tend to her exclusively.

Meanwhile, Marco, a travel writer, has fallen in love with Lydia (Rosario Flores), a famous matador whom he has been assigned to write about. Marco watches Lydia being gored in a bullfight, which puts her in a coma and in the same clinic as Alicia, in the adjacent room. Marco and Benigno become friends, Benigno instructing Marco in how to tend to Lydia, his most important piece of advice the film’s titular command.

The bulk of the film follows Marco and Benigno as they watch over their sleeping beauties. This is straight-faced melodrama without a shred of camp. It’s sort of a “women’s picture” that happens to star men, its association of “feminine” characteristics weeping, nursing, caretaking with its male leads one of its most compelling and daring qualities. The film is also interesting formally in that it communicates narrative information, and commentary, through the use of other films, as with the scene that Marco and Benigno watch at the beginning of the film which predicts their own roles. This strategy is also deployed in the film’s most triumphant moment, as Benigno relates to Alicia the details of a silent film he has seen, Shrinking Lover. Here Almodovar re-creates the (fictional) film, an ecstatically inventive and sexually explicit Freudian meditation on desire and the desire to please. Only later do we realize it communicates some concurrent and crucial off-screen action that Almodovar doesn’t show.

Neither as freewheelingly entertaining as Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down! or as richly accomplished as All About My Mother, Talk to Her is something of a curiosity a bit ponderous and self-indulgent, more than a little pretentious but worth it for that fanciful, bravura silent interlude.

Chris Herrington

The femme fatale of this wacky game-show/CIA hit-man movie is Julia Roberts, who, over coffee in the film’s third act, quotes Nietzsche: “The man who despises himself still respects himself as he who despises.” This kernel of wisdom comes too late for Chuck Barris, who has spent his whole life ambitiously despising himself. It’s difficult to know whether Barris, who has much to atone for (The Gong Show, The Gong Show Movie, killing 33 people), despises himself for his past sins or if he sins because of his self-loathing, but it is clear that he was unhappy with himself and took his life on a colorful, reckless path to deal with it.

Based on his 1981 “unauthorized autobiography,” Confessions of a Dangerous Mind traces the rise and falls of Barris (Sam Rockwell), an obscure man turned obscure celebrity. Beginning as a page at ABC Studios, Barris climbs the ranks until he is pitching his own shows to the network president. His brainchild: a game show where young single women select one of three young, unseen men for a possible date, based on their answers to “important” questions. Sound familiar? It’s The Dating Game.

Before success strikes Barris, fate does — in the form of CIA agent Jim Byrd (George Clooney) who offers Barris a deal he can’t refuse: to become a special agent for the CIA too — a hit man. Once The Dating Game takes off, he has the perfect cover. Babysitting googoo-eyed twentysomethings by day, whacking foreign operatives by night. Simple. Fun. Patriotic.

Complicating things (as it will do) is true love. Barris spends years trying to figure out a place in his heart for young, perky Penny (Drew Barrymore). Their open relationship weathers poorly over the years (funny how that happens) and his infidelity soon gets the best of them — forcing him to confront the fact that his life of self-hatred and aggressive self-involvement has prevented him from learning how to love (funny how that happens). Cancelled shows, failed relationships, and murder anxiety take their toll and Barris breaks down — nervously, that is. The result: endlessly standing naked in front of a TV, unkempt, dirty, out of it. Perhaps this is hell for bad TV producers — frozen in front of a TV with nothing good on for all eternity. That’s karma. But Barris snaps out of it and writes a book about his life, purging himself of his Technicolor transgressions. The rest: history.

George Clooney marks his directorial debut with this film, and it is a marvelously accomplished first go. The style of the film is a colorful, moody patchwork of vivid lighting, clever music, funny editing, and goofy casting — very much in keeping with the ’60s and ’70s game show/spy fantasia that was Barris’ life. Would that the Austin Powers franchise had the sense of genuine fun and shadowed homage. Would also that all first-time directors could so cannily navigate in and out of riotously funny absurdity through to real pathos — as in the scene where a paranoid, delusional Barris, in the middle of a Gong Show taping, begs a stagehand to get it over with and kill him. The world, for a moment, is frozen in fear. That this occurs on the set of The Gong Show is hilarious yet somehow so profound that we cannot laugh. Just as effective: when Barris turns the tables on the CIA mole that’s been sent to kill him. What could be/should be very funny is darkened by a reprise of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” and by the straight-playing real acting of its stars — well-timed and superbly composed by Clooney.

Rockwell provides an uncanny likeness to the look and spirit of King Gong. Snarky, twitchy, leering, he channels considerable authenticity from a mostly unlikable but compulsively watchable dark clown. We never quite sympathize with him, nor does the film try to get us under his skin. It’s unnecessary. As an audience, we view as one would rubbernecking past a circus-y train wreck — all bright colors and strange messes. Best to view from several feet back, but, unlike anything else associated with Chuck Barris, this is must-see TV. — Bo List

The historical drama Rabbit-Proof Fence is Australian director Phillip Noyce’s first project in his home country in more than a decade — a decade spent helming such forgettable Hollywood director-for-hire projects as Sliver, The Bone Collector, and The Saint. And while it’s a welcome departure from that sort of product, Rabbit-Proof Fence, in its own way, is just as anonymous as those films.

Noyce, who also directed the well-received The Quiet American, set to open in Memphis next month, puts very little personality into this tale of three Aboriginal girls who are abducted from their outback home and taken to a government training school. Yet the material is so compelling on its own terms that it seems sufficient for Noyce to get out of the way and merely present the facts in such a simple and direct way. And perhaps Noyce deserves credit for his restraint and for his refusal to exploit the material for easy sentimentality or pathos.

Set in Western Australia in 1931, the film is adapted from a book by Australian writer Doris Pilkington that recounts the true childhood story of her mother, Molly (Everlyn Sampi), then 14, her aunt, Daisy (Tianna Sansbury), then 8, and their cousin Gracie (Laura Monaghan), then 10, who were abducted from their mothers by government agents and transported 1,200 miles away to the state-run Moore River training school.

The film, dedicated to the “stolen generations” of Aborigine children, documents a controversial passage in Australian history in which official government policy (enforced into the 1970s, the film tells us) was to take “half-caste” children from their Aboriginal homes and train them (to be house servants and factory workers, basically) to live in the “white” world.

The government rationale for this policy is embodied by A.O. Neville (a historical figure, here played by Kenneth Branagh), the administrator of the relocation policy, who exudes a well-meaning yet sinister racial paternalism. An amateur eugenicist, Neville is shown giving a slide show about the “native problem” to a ladies-who-lunch crowd, demonstrating how, by taking half-caste children out of their Aboriginal communities, it is possible to “breed the color out” in just a couple of generations and insisting that, “in spite of himself, the native must be helped.”

The offspring of Aboriginal women and since-departed white construction workers who helped build the titular fence (a modest wood-and-wire contraption that spans the continent and separates white-owned farmland from the pestilence of the country’s rabbit population), Molly, Daisy, and Gracie are marked for removal. The abduction scene itself, in which a government officer in a jeep chases down the fleeing girls and their mothers outside the dusty, desert depot of Jigalong and forcibly removes the girls from their mothers’ clutches, is the film’s most harrowing and memorable scene.

The girls are taken to the Moore River school, where nuns teach them to be good, Christian, white girls who perform manual labor and scold them to “stop that jabbering” when they try to talk to each other in their native language. They run away, following the fence on a months-long trek home, pursued by a tracker from the school. And it is this journey, oddly calm and free of narrative tension, that forms the bulk of the film.

This slow-paced, naturalistic stretch, in which the untrained young actresses traverse the country’s outback, is as likely to remind filmgoers of some of the Iranian films that have played Memphis in the last few years as it is Nicholas Roeg’s superficially similar outback drama Walkabout.

Rabbit-Proof Fence is a subject of much debate in Australia, where this history is still very controversial and a sore point for a government that refuses to apologize for the policy. But American audiences need not be familiar with the political history of Australia to get the point. This is a film whose legitimate sense of outrage rhymes all too closely with our own history. — Chris Herrington