Arts act as early warning devices for societies, as they monitor reality and predict what it might be like in the future, but the most important function of dramas such as movies or series is to document that reality in all its details.
Perhaps that job is the secret of the attention to detail in the work, such as the model (model) of the hero's car, the furniture of his house, and the features of the city or village in which the dramatic conflict takes place.
Many works of art recorded prophecies, which were later proven true, and some of them monitored phenomena that were found and were only noticed by the artist’s eye, which re-embodied them through the camera.
The series “The Recruiter”, which is currently shown on the Netflix screen, presents a vision related to the most secret agency in the world, which is the CIA, and storms it from the inside, to come out in an image that is completely opposite to that known image of it, which Hollywood contributed to building a part Big ones through her movies.
The events of the eight episodes of the series revolve around Owen Hendrix (actor Noah Centineo), a recent graduate chosen to work in the CIA, and from the first week on the job his life turns upside down, especially when he discovers a threatening letter from former informant Max Meladze (actress Laura Haddock). That plans to expose the agency unless she gets acquitted of a serious crime.
Entangled in a dangerous world of killers, the new recruit is forced to travel the world in hopes of completing his mission and making a mark in the CIA.
Personnel Clash: Noah Centineo, Artie Mann, and Colton Dunn in "Recruiting" (IMDP)
The director of the work with the filming crew was able to present a beautiful and smooth picture, and despite the violence embedded within the work, only simple signs appeared implicitly and not explicitly except in scenes that require clarity.
The work is also credited with the audacity with which it dealt with a sensitive apparatus within the United States, including its aging, decline in role, lack of internal coordination, and sagging.
Baby face and spy figure
The work makers tried to combine the atmosphere of social and comic works on the one hand, and the suspense and excitement in the works of the spy, as he reviewed the life of Owen Henderson with his ex-girlfriend in one apartment that resembles student housing for high school teenagers, and gave it a comic character on the one hand, and continued the main dramatic line of the hero's adventures and his involvement With the devices on the other hand, the result was a heterogeneous mixture, more like two different works mixed together.
The childish face of the action hero Noah Centineo, who has just emerged from the roles of high school students after a great success in them, the latest of which was the movie “To All the Boys I've Loved Before” (2018), helped separate the scenes completely from dealing seriously. With the intelligence agent that Hollywood used to present with a grim face and a mean smile.
The need to provide a comic framework for the work prompted its makers to present the personality of the American agent who is completely chaotic and completely naive. Everything around him is out of his control, whether in his intelligence work or in his personal relationships. He is kidnapped where he is not expected, subjected to blackmail from his colleagues, receives pressure from everyone, and falls into crises. Material, and he is forced to borrow from his ex-girlfriend, who is trying to protect him.. It is the features and attitudes of a comic character in a social film, not an intelligence series.
Rhythm
The series began in its first and second episodes with clear enthusiasm, and it gathered interesting events in them. The viewer finds a young man who has just graduated and has been thrown into the darkest outposts of the CIA, and then he is surprised by the relationship between him and his older colleagues, similar to the relationship between archive employees in one of the government departments in a country In the third world, he is assigned the worst tasks, and pushed to boring work without daring to protest as new at work, until he encounters a neglected letter, so the real adventure of work begins.
And from a prison in the United States, he travels to one of the device’s stations in Yemen without coordination, only to be tortured by his colleagues who do not believe that he reached them without previous coordination, and we discover later that he is a “mold” of his old colleagues, and it is most likely that a similar situation would have occurred in Indeed, it necessitated the trial of colleagues.
The rhythm of the series begins to collapse quickly in the remaining episodes, as the work makers weave a spider web of relationships between different parties in the cities of the world.
The director was keen to form a special image of the hero, Owen Henderson, as he is characterized by extreme intelligence, perseverance, courage, and the ability to bear in a situation that contradicts the nature of the character.
Despite the fact that he receives a "hot relationship" every time, whether from enemies or friends, he never hesitates, so the unit in which he works in the CIA gradually turns to relying on him, in exchange for a strange picture of his colleagues in the main center, who find nothing. They do nothing but plot conspiracies for him out of jealousy, and to ensure that he does not gain prestige with the manager.
And the picture appears more pathetic outside the main center, as Henderson visits one of the sub-centers inside America to find a group of employees who are obese, lazy and helpless, so he is forced to solve his problems himself.
Separate construction
The work lacks a real unity between its events and its characters, as the logical reasons for one event and another that came as a result of it are not enough.
There is a deeper structure that the work lacked, related to drama, which is essentially a rephrase of life stories, with many details reduced to specific axes around which the work revolves.
The work seemed quite logical, but what is certain is that the hero, Noah Centineo, was not fit for the role and was not fit for the role.
Despite his serious attempts, the features of the high school student and the way he performed in his previous work dominated him even in the most serious situations in intelligence work. The situations between him and Laura Haddock in prison during his visits to her were as if they were dialogues between an intelligence agent and a high school student who is characterized by lightness and superficiality.
Centineo was not the only one who fell inadvertently at work, but was preceded by his ex-girlfriend, for whom the author tried by all means to dig a real role in the work, so he made a kind of elongation and lengthening by adding the characters of her father and mother.
Laura game
Max Beladze (Laura Haddock) was able to snatch the action championship from Noah Centineo with a wonderful performance and amazing ability to embody, as she presented the character of a Russian woman who works as a spy for the American intelligence and belongs to the Russian gangs, and is characterized by violence and intelligence.
The construction of Max Beladze's character was largely coherent, which made the performance tight, but Laura Haddock's ability to embody the character who sent a threat to the CIA if she was not acquitted in a brutal murder appears clear through a frightening oral and visual performance.
When Owen Henderson responds to the threatening message, the series actually begins. We witness the character of Max, who comes from the world of gangs, and who bears a deep sadness as a result of a real melodrama that unfolds at the end of the work, as we discover that her daughter, to whom she entrusted her love and dreams, is her main opponent.
Laura spoke the Russian accent brilliantly in English, and her sharp features helped her express herself in moments of silence, especially in situations where intelligence work and feelings were mixed.
Laura Haddock is a rising British actress who became famous through the movie “Guardians of the Galaxy” in its two parts in 2014 and 2017, as well as the movie “Transformers: The Last Knight 2017”.