As far as hotshot software designer James Clayton (Colin Farrell) is concerned, the CIA is just a bunch of “fat, old guys who were asleep when we needed them most.” That’s what he tells Walter Burke (Al Pacino), a CIA recruiter who visits James at the bar he tends in the evenings. It’s because of this night job that James overslept for a demonstration of his latest software innovation for a client earlier that morning. But his fast-on-his-feet recovery impressed not only the client but also Burke, who now wants James to consider the CIA.

“Would I have to kill anybody?” James flippantly asks. “Would you like to?” Burke answers. Burke knows how to push all the right buttons. James can’t see how he could possibly be CIA material, but Burke is “a scary judge of talent” and sees his potential. Burke also suggests that a job with the CIA might help James discover the truth behind his father’s mysterious death years ago.

And so James finds himself at The Farm, the CIA’s top secret training ground for new recruits. He’s immediately fascinated by Layla Moore (Bridget Moynahan), a brilliant, multilingual and astonishingly beautiful fellow student. Chemistry between the two is immediate; James is the more interested of the two but as long as they’re both trainees at The Farm it doesn’t matter anyway since that kind of thing is discouraged.

After James fails an important test, he’s let go from the program while his classmates graduate to their new assignments. But James doesn’t have much time to be devastated — Burke reveals that he was flushed out of the program for a reason. Layla Moore is a mole who infiltrated the CIA via The Farm and is now trying to steal a deadly new kind of computer virus. The CIA needs James to find out how she plans to do it and who she’s doing it for. It’s an offer that James should probably refuse, but can’t.

Burke sets him up with a desk job at CIA headquarters, where Layla has taken a job with the agency’s science department. He’ll have to infiltrate her life to get what he needs, but in the process could lose not only his heart but also his life.

Ah, but in the world of the CIA nothing is ever what it seems. James finds himself at war with everything he knows and feels, and must ultimately rely not on his training but on his own instincts to survive his first assignment.

The Recruit almost feels like two films. The first half of the movie, which covers James’ recruitment and training at The Farm, feels like something that Jerry Bruckheimer might have produced — superr slick, super stylish and sometimes bordering on silly. Burke rounds up James and the other male recruits and takes them to a bar, where he tells each of them to make it back out to the parking lot with a woman who intends to have sex with them. The other training exercises are cool enough and adequately interesting, but it all seems too hip and too sexy. (A good example is the line of questioning James gives Layla during a training sequence that involves a lie detector test.) The training portion of the film gives a fun insight into what CIA training might actually be like, but tends to be too stylish for its own good.

The second half of the film, however, is more Frankenheimer than Bruckheimer. The CIA hopes that James’ chemistry with Layla will be the perfect tool to get him into Layla’s life, and the resulting conflict shifts the film’s gears into a psychological thriller that unfolds within a cleverly played web of cloak and dagger.

From the moment James agrees to foil Layla’s mission, The Recruit is emotionally powerful and deliciously suspenseful. And though Pacino plays Burke to the actor’s usual degree of perfection, it’s Colin Farrell and Bridget Moynahan who really make this thing work.

Moynahan recently starred with Ben Affleck in The Sum of All Fears as Jack Ryan’s fiancée Cathy, a strong, compassionate doctor coming to terms with the realization that the man she loves is living a dangerous CIA life. This time Moynahan is the CIA agent, and even Jack Ryan would be a fool to take on Layla Moore with the fate of the United States at stake. She’s played pretty faces in Coyote Ugly and the TV series Sex and the City, but never has she had a role that has required so much of her as the role of Layla Moore in The Recruit. The range of emotion Moynahan shows here is stunning and powerful; it will be remembered as one of the sexiest and most confident performances by an actress this year.

Film after film, Colin Farrell is establishing himself as a force to be reckoned with. The last couple of years have seen this incredible young actor working with some of the best talent in the industry. He held his own against Tom Cruise in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report. He starred alongside Bruce Willis in the World War II prison camp drama Hart’s War and most recently kicked the asses of Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck as the deadly assassin Bullseye in Daredevil. There’s also been a lot of talk that he might be the next Batman. But one thing that’s for certain is this — Farrell has played a wide variety of roles against some very diverse and demanding actors and directors, and he’s only getting better.

There’s a ferocious appeal about Farrell that goes beyond the obvious appeal of his good looks. There’s something very honest and soulful about his portrayal of James Clayton, and that’s what draws the audience into his struggle. No matter how crazy the world around him is becoming, James fights to stay true to himself. And though that might get him killed, it’s the only thing keeping him alive. Farrell’s portrayal of that struggle is the heart of the film, and he’s believable every step of the way. It should also be noted that Farrell has to switch off his native accent to play an American. He’s done it before, but think of it this way — it takes enough concentration and precision to act with your own voice. But when you have to take on a voice that isn’t your own, it takes twice the concentration and twice the precision. And when you’re playing scenes against the likes of Al Pacino, there’s no room for error. Farrell makes it look all too easy.

The dynamic between Farrell and Pacino is a pleasure to watch. Even in his most restrained moments Pacino can seem a bit over the top, and there are moments in the script that call for him to be just that. Farrell, brilliantly and appropriately, underplays his own performance to keep a pitch-perfect pace with Pacino. Farrell’s chemistry with Pacino is every bit as mesmerizing as his chemistry with Moynahan is explosive.

Farrell’s best chemistry, perhaps, is with director Roger Donaldson. As James gets deeper into his mission, there are moments when his cover is almost blown. Donaldson cleverly sets up situations that James barely gets out of in time, and it’s up to Farrell to make these moments work. The tricks James uses are always rooted in situations that were set up earlier in the film, and that always makes for a more satisfying pay-off.

Donaldson has helmed his fair share of action films and thrillers: Species, Dante’s Peak, the Alec Baldwin/Kim Basinger version of The Getaway and White Sands. His directing credits most relevant to The Recruit are the recent Cuban Missle Crisis thriller Thirteen Days and the excellent spy thriller No Way Out, which starred Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman and Sean Young. The Recruit was written by Roger Towne (In the Company of Spies, The Natural), Kurt Wimmer (The Thomas Crown Affair) and Mitch Glazer (Great Expectations, Scrooged).

The Recruit is a fun, entertaining movie with standout performances by Farrell and Moynahan. Think of the first half as Top Gun in the CIA. But it’s the powerfully acted and brutally suspenseful second half that will leave you groping for the edge of your seat long after you’ve fallen off of it.

Eighteen months ago, Detroit undercover narcotics cop Nick Tellis (Jason Patric) became unintentionally responsible for a sickeningly tragic accident when a bust went bad. For his actions, Tellis was suspended from the force for what would have been a heroic action had it not turned out the way it did. He has been haunted ever since by the kind of guilt from which no man could possibly recover.

Two months ago, undercover narcotics cop Michael Calvess took a bullet in the head while on duty. And suddenly the Detroit Police Department is interested in Nick Tellis again. Not because he had anything to do with it, but because the connections he built with the city’s drug element during his time as an undercover officer might be the only hope in finding the murdered cop’s killer.

If Tellis can bring the killer to justice, he’ll be reinstated as a police officer with the assignment of his choice. “I need a desk,” he asks desperately. The reply? “Get me a conviction and I’ll get you a desk.”

It’s a terrible decision to make. Police work is the only thing Tellis has ever known, and it’s all he’s ever wanted to do. He has a wife and a baby to support, and the pension he’s been receiving since his suspension can’t cut it much longer. There’s also an emotional connection: Michael Calvess left behind a wife and two young daughters. It could have been Nick Tellis who died that day, and for that reason Tellis feels even more responsible. There’s also the fact that Tellis knows, just as his superiors know, that he’s the best man for the job.

On the other hand, Tellis knows painfully well what undercover narcotics work can do to a man and his family. That’s the heart of his struggle; he knows he shouldn’t say yes to this deal for the very same reasons he knows he has to. His wife, Audrey (Krista Bridges), begs him to say no, but Tellis follows his gut right back to his badge.

Tellis won’t be alone in the investigation, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. His partner will be Henry Oak (Ray Liotta), an aptly named mountain of a homicide detective who’s already been kicked off the Calvess case because for use of excessive force. Calvess was his friend and Oak considers the murdered cop’s family his own. On paper he’s the perfect policeman — 93 percent conviction rate, zero hesitation in the line of duty and total dedication to the job. But, as Tellis is warned by a superior, Oak is also “all that shit a cop can’t be. Not in this city. Not right now.”

And so the fringe cop who’s fallen out of favor must partner with a dangerously violent detective to solve a case that’s important to each of them. The department hopes that Tellis’ intelligence and connections will help focus Oak’s rage into a successful solving of the case. The department will get its cop killer, Oak gets back on the case and Tellis might get the chance for redemption that his soul so desperately needs.

As the investigation progresses, Tellis finds himself in terrifying territory. Was Michael Calvess really the good cop everyone thought him to be? If not, just how much did Henry Oak know about it? And if he knew about it, could he even have been involved in it? It all builds to one final, shocking moment of clarity.

Actors dream of scripts like this one. It was written by the film’s director, Jim Carnahan, who got the idea from a documentary called The Thin Blue Line, about a Texas cop killed in the line of duty in 1976. Carnahan made a 30-minute short called Gun Point that would later evolve into the script for Narc.

The performances here are worth every bit of the buzz they’re receiving, primarily because Patric and Liotta are very giving to each other. Liotta gives Patric plenty to feel uncomfortable about, and Patric’s reactions are acted with subtle hesitations that allow Liotta to channel his aggressions in new directions (which often end up being right back at Patric).

Let’s break this down. First of all, Ray Liotta. Something Wild got him noticed in 1986, but 1991’s Goodfellas made the man a star. He’s got the looks and presence of a leading man, but also has an intensity that makes him unpredictable. He’s played his fair share of psychopaths, in films like Unlawful Entry and Turbulence. And he’s played his fair share of jerks, with notable supporting turns in recent films Hannibal and John Q. The key to his character in Narc is that, even though Henry Oak shares lots of characteristics with both psychopaths and jerks, he’s really neither. And as a result, Liotta gets to turn in a performance that’s entirely new for him without compromising an iota of his trademark intensity.

He does get help from the script. Henry Oak could have been the same borderline bad cop you’ve seen in dozens of other cop movies, but the script periodically and unpredictably gives us reasons why Oak treats his job the way he does. We’ve seen this type of character before, but the combination of Liotta’s acting and the script’s high regard for characters makes him an individual whom we can ultimately identify with, when otherwise he might have been just another hardboiled cop in just another hardboiled cop movie. As brutally intense as his performance here is, there’s a lot of heart — no matter how broken or twisted it might be — at its core.

And it’s not just what Liotta radiates from the inside. The actor packed on 30 pounds for the role, and has never looked rougher or more intimidating on film. And when you combine the physical power he wields in this movie with the limitless inner rage we all know he’s capable of, you get a Ray Liotta performance that will likely surpass his work in Goodfellas as the best of his career thus far.

Jason Patric is just as good, in an entirely different way than Liotta. Patric got the thankless job of replacing Keanu Reeves in the ill-fated Speed sequel Cruise Control, but is likely best known to genre fans as Michael in the ’87 vampire classic The Lost Boys. Those in the past who’ve dismissed Patric as a pretty boy obviously missed his dramatic turns in Sleepers, which co-starred Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Brad Pitt and Kevin Bacon and, more recently, writer/director Neil LaBute’s Your Friends and Neighbors. Like LaBute’s previous film In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors was a twisted morality tale about the evil that men do. Patric, who starred in the film with Aaron Eckhart, Catherine Keener, Amy Brenneman and Ben Stiller, won much critical acclaim for the role and even took home the Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award for best supporting actor. He might not have as lengthy a CV as Liotta’s, but going into Narc he certainly had the potential.

And from the first frame of the film to the last, Patric mesmerizes. Tellis is a tragic character, and in many ways it’s his movie. It’s not really the story of murdered cop Michael Calvess. It’s not the story of volatile detective Henry Oak. It’s the story of shattered cop Nick Tellis, and how this case and these events affect him. And because of this, Tellis becomes our emotional guide through the film. Patric is the perfect conduit.

We’re there with Tellis during the tragedy that devastated him. We share his uneasiness around Henry Oak; we don’t want him to accept the Calvess case but we also know that he ultimately must. Buried under thick, shaggy hair and a goatee, Patric doesn’t rely at all on his looks to sell this part. While Liotta’s intensity is a constant in the film, Patric wisely and skillfully resists unleashing any of his own … until he has to. The film’s most dramatic moments occur when Tellis forces Oak to see him as an equal, and Patric plays off Liotta in these moments with amazing precision. Tellis is a haunted man, and Patric shows us all sides of that in his complex execution of a very difficult role.

The script also gives Patric and Liotta a good variety of scenes that illustrate different aspects of their partnership. For some of the places Oak goes, Tellis has no choice but to follow. In other scenes, Tellis brings a very reluctant Oak around to a clearer way of thinking. One of the best scenes takes place in a car, as the two men discuss their wives and Liotta shows a very rare crack in Oak’s armor. We also see how Oak and Tellis are different kinds of cops. Tellis wears a bulletproof vest. Oak storms in shotgun blazing, with nothing but rage under his shirt and tie.

Supporting roles are also filled by capable actors. Krista Bridges, acclaimed for her dramatic work in 1992’s The Shower, plays Tellis’ wife, Audrey, with much warmth and concern. Audrey has seen what being an undercover narcotics officer has done to her husband, and she knows how painful the last 18 months have been for him. Now that they have a baby, she’s more afraid than ever of the work her husband has to do to bring down the bad guys. Chi McBride (Gone in 60 Seconds, Boston Public) is his usual excellent self as the police chief who’s just as uncomfortable about the Calvess case as Tellis is. Rap star Busta Rhymes was fun alongside Samuel L. Jackson in Shaft, but is absolutely riveting here in a very physically and emotionally demanding supporting role as a major suspect. Anne Openshaw is fragile and emotionally ragged as the slain officer’s widow.

Narc is constantly working on multiple dramatic and emotional levels, and those layers will demand at least a second viewing. The characters in this film have gone through terrible times in their lives, and Carnahan’s script builds them up from their reactions to those experiences. As a result, the audience always knows where a character is coming from and why he’s so afraid, hurt, angry, etc. Editor John Gilroy deftly navigates the film between story narrative and character development with only a few distracting stylistic indulgences. This is by far the most dramatic thing he’s ever edited, and the craftsmanship here is stunning. It’s all about the emotion — even the appropriately sparse musical score by Cliff Martinez (The Limey, Traffic, Solaris) leaves Patric and Liotta almost entirely in charge of setting the film’s emotional tone. Tom Cruise, no stranger to intense characters himself, gets an executive producer credit.

The look of the film also goes a long way. Narc is a cold, lonely movie. When characters talk, you can see their breath. It’s winter in Detroit, and cinematographer Alex Nepomniaschy uses blue lens filters to make the harshest city in America seem even harsher.

You might think you’ve seen it all in cop movies, and in many ways you’re probably right. But Narc always seems to push either its story or its actors one step further to create something fresh in a genre that’s in danger of becoming stale. With lots of strong competition on TV from the likes of The Shield, cop movies have to be something that viewers can’t get on television. Narc is just that, combining an unforgettably intense story with unrelenting performances from Patric and Liotta.

Space. The final frontier. Is this the last voyage of Picard’s Enterprise?

Star Trek: Nemesis is the tenth Trek film and the fourth to feature the Next Generation crew led by stalwart Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart). Commander William Riker (Jonathan Frakes), Counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) and Lieutenants Data (Brent Spiner), Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) and Worf (Michael Dorn) have been through it all and then some with Picard since the TV series began in 1987. Nemesis, unfortunately, falls desperately short of the excellent heights they’ve reached during their 15-year mission to seek out new life forms and boldly go where no one has gone before.

Star Trek: Generations (1994) was the feature film passing of the phaser between the Kirk and Picard regimes. The next two TNG installments, 1996’s First Contact and 1998’s Insurrection, were directed by Riker himself, Jonathan Frakes. Particularly in First Contact, his execution seemed effortless and came across flawlessly. It makes a lot of sense that it would shake down that way; Frakes knows the characters and the mythology, he knows the actors and he knows what made the show work. His Trek films were filled with the kinds of little character interactions that thrilled longtime fans and conveyed years of character development to new audiences with simple looks and gestures.

But for this installment Frakes was replaced in the director’s chair by Stuart Baird, whose only other directing credits are the Fugitive spin-off U.S. Marshals and the hilariously bad Executive Decision. You don’t have to be Mr. Spock to think the decision illogical. Though Baird has been editing movies for the better part of three decades, he’s still an editor at heart. Nemesis has some impressive action sequences, but the action can’t match First Contact in ingenuity or intensity. Even worse, character interaction under Baird’s command seems stilted and often even awkward.

The script by Trek newcomer and Gladiator scribe John Logan never realizes what little potential the story provides. On its way to drop newlyweds Riker and Troi off for their honeymoon, the Enterprise crew discovers an early prototype of Data (cleverly called B4) and ends up being sent to investigate what just might be a Romulan proposition for peace. But the line between the hierarchal Romulans and grotesque Remans has been crossed the hard way by Shinzon (Tom Hardy), a young clone of Picard whose brutality is a match for Picard’s nobility. (It’s almost not as silly as it sounds. Almost.) Tempered by a life of Romulan cruelty, Shinzon has a plan to ravage the entire known universe with a radiation weapon that acts as a virus. It’s Picard vs. Evil Young Clone Picard with the fate of the universe at stake. Whatever.

Production designer Herman Zimmerman is still on board from the previous films, allowing Nemesis to maintain the clean, unique visual style that has come to define Star Trek. The ships look particularly impressive. But the cutting room work of Baird and editor Dallas Puett (Tomb Raider) leaves much to be desired and even sinks as low as cheesy slow-motion in some of the fight scenes. Remember all of those breathtaking multi-ship space combat scenes in First Contact? Don’t expect that here, though Nemesis does have its moments as the Enterprise takes it worst beating yet. But overall, the level of visual excitement just isn’t there.

The biggest weaknesses here are story and script. Picard’s wedding toast to Riker and Troi sounds like the awkward ramblings of a complete stranger. The characters have been reduced to standard action movie stereotypes who say standard action movie things. (The last scene between Riker and Picard, for example, is not only infinitely underwritten but a terribly tired cliché.) Maybe it’s the script. Maybe it’s Baird’s lack of familiarity with Star Trek. Either way, you don’t get the impression that these people have been serving together for 15 years of love, loyalty and loss.

The actors do what they can with what they’ve got. Dina Meyer (Birds of Prey) plays a sexy-as-hell Romulan commander called Donatra. With much of her lovely face covered by makeup, Meyer really gets to show off her superbly effective voice. As Shinzon’s right hand Reman Viceroy, Ron Perlman looks more like something out of Blade 2 than he did in, well, Blade 2, and admirably acts beyond the limitations of a mask. Brent Spiner gets some wonderful moments as Data here, while Marina Sirtis gets to do some powerful dramatic work. LeVar Burton gets a few good moments with Spiner, but the rest of the cast members seem like cameos in their own movie.

The significant Data story aside, Nemesis boils down to Shinzon and Picard. Though certainly righteous, Picard is never pretentious. Hardy manages to steer barely clear of overdoing it as the young clone of Jean-Luc, and is convincing in his portrayal of the depravity that Shinzon can only barely contain. Patrick Stewart has as many good moments as the screenplay will give him, but the material here is nowhere near the quality he had to work with in First Contact.

For every big dramatic set-up in Nemesis, we get a cheap, shallow pay-off. And what should be the most explosively emotional moment of this crew’s entire 15 years together is split up into so many scenes over so many minutes that all emotion is sucked right out of it. It’s one thing for the Trek producers to have made such a decision. But it’s a shame that it had to happen in a film so mediocre as this one. If this is the final Next Generation film, it’s a stunningly terrible way to end such a wonderful series. If further adventures are planned, it will take a lot of work to breathe new life into the shambles this installment has left of the franchise. It might have somewhere left to go, but only a good story can measure how boldly.