From Ballykissangel to starring alongside Tom Cruise (in Minority Report) and now Al Pacino in only a couple of years. I think it would be fair to say that Colin Farrell has done pretty well in his acting career to date, although I can't say I'm entirely convinced by his acting ability (it's perfectly good enough, just not outstanding), but he certainly has the charisma and screen presence to slip nicely into some pretty decent Hollywood films. This CIA training thriller is from the director of Species and Dante's Peak, but evidently hasn't found a regular composer of choice and so after Christopher Young and, erm, John Frizzell we have Klaus Badelt, who isn't climbing the ladder as quickly as Farrell, but is doing well at picking films that are varied, reasonably high profile, if of variable quality.
After the seemingly endless dirge of K19: Widowmaker, The Recruit is propelled along by almost continuous synthetic percussion that doesn't sound like the usual Media Ventures box of tricks, but neither does it have the ultra contemporary feel of a David Arnold synth. If anything, it's the dark side to Edward Shearmur's trippy K-Pax, but with the emphasis on the dark. In truth, there isn't as much edginess to the music as one might like, it's more a dark undercurrent propelling the music along, usually accompanying stretched out string lines. There are a couple of motifs that occur throughout, but nothing much that constitutes a melody, although with the backing so insistent, it doesn't really matter too much. A few piano riffs fill in the quieter moments, but these moments are rare. The two longer tracks are the most interesting, Hijacked has some moderately inventive synth stingers, although they do come across more as sound effects than actual music.
At around 50 minutes, the album definitely outstays its welcome, but even half an hour might have been too much. There is a depressing sameness about it, of those 50 minutes I would guess that at least 40 of them are taken with synth percussion - which is admittedly well conceived, not too ponderous or overbearing - with slow strings and not a great deal of variation in tempo. It's the film score drum and bass equivalent to Philip Glass' The Hours, released around the same time; the base material isn't bad (although Glass' is more affecting), but so little is done with it, that it becomes a chore. Like Glass' effort, the music has just the right feel and is probably most effective in the film and while it's of more interest than some heavily synthetic thriller scores, there still isn't a great deal to recommend.