The Recruit is a 2003 American spy thriller film directed by Roger Donaldson and starring Al Pacino, Colin Farrell and Bridget Moynahan.

[3] While studying nonlinear cryptography at MIT, James Clayton helps to create "Spartacus", a surveillance program that can enslave any computer's audiovisual hardware.

Hoping to find answers to his father's mysterious death in a plane crash in Peru years ago, James passes the initial security screenings and is bused with the rest of his class to the Farm in rural Virginia, where they undergo training as prospective CIA operatives.

Burke seeks a despondent James and explains that his discharge was merely a cover story; that he has been selected as a non-official cover operative (NOC) tasked to investigate Layla, whom Burke suspects is a sleeper agent working to steal the CIA computer virus "ICE-9", which transmits via the electrical grid and could disable all electrical devices on the planet, thus behaving similarly to the particle from Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle.

Layla tells James that he is not a NOC, that Zack is, and that she was officially tasked by the agency to steal ICE-9 as part of assessing their security protocols.

James sets up a laptop that runs Spartacus, which fails to connect but leads Burke to believe that it has successfully transmitted his confession to the agency.

Chasing James outside, Burke is met by a CIA strike team led by Farm instructor Dennis Slayne.

It was filmed mainly in Toronto and Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada, with some landmark scenes, such as that from the Iwo Jima Memorial by the Arlington National Cemetery, shot in and around Washington, D.C.

"[15] Mike Clark of USA Today gave a mixed review to the film, stating, "Nothing is ever what it seems, but still, nothing's very compelling in The Recruit, a less-than-middling melodrama whose subject matter and talent never click as much as its credits portend.