The Recruit premieres globally on Netflix on Dec. 16.
The most original thing going for Netflix’s new spy/thriller, The Recruit, is its passion for gleefully thrashing its lead character, Owen Hendricks (Noah Centineo). Not exactly the conventional path for a show in this genre, yet it sorta works solely based on Centineo’s utter commitment to being that “poor guy” who's chronically in over his head all season long. He’s essentially a human Wile E. Coyote in a black suit. How much you’ll dig that schtick in The Recruit really depends on if you like your spy guys super competent and studly, or you’re ok with watching one make well-intentioned mistake after mistake.
Hendricks is a fresh hire in the CIA’s General Counsel division in Langley, Virginia. He’s eager to please his CIA supervisor Walter Nyland (Vondie Curtis-Hall), and is an easy hazing target for his more seasoned, but mean-spirited colleagues, Agent Violet (Aarti Mann) and Agent Lester (Colton Dunn). Dumped with the grunt work of reading through the pile of “crazies” mail that is 90% crackpot conspiracy theory missives from the public, Hendricks actually unearths one that reads like a legitimately serious letter from a female prisoner in Phoenix, Arizona. She wants to be released or she’s threatening to give up the black ops intel she knows. It prompts him to ask his perpetually sweaty and stressed General Counsel peer, Janus Ferber (Kristian Bruun), about the language in the letter that ends up being a cryptonym for something extremely serious.
Reporting the finding to Nyland gets Hendricks the assignment to follow up on the letter and the sender, which thrusts the green lawyer into the field with essentially no help, hostile people trying to hurt him at every location, and everyone being one step ahead of him. His only ally – and that’s really questionable – is that prisoner, Max Meladze (Laura Haddock). She sees Henricks as a malleable asset through which she can demand, and threaten blackmail, for her release. Luckily, as naive as Owen may be, he’s not stupid and he manages to temper her threats by leveraging her need of him to gain her freedom, so an uneasy alliance is formed.
If you haven’t main-lined a steady diet of Tom Clancy, John le Carré, or Robert Ludlum books, The Recruit can be a bit overwhelming with its liberal slathering of CIA acronyms, jargon, and protocol language. It’s also over-packed with ops upon ops upon ops which exist to put Hendricks in escalating situations of dire personal threat. Essentially, Season 1’s arc for Owen is watching him make a litany of bad choices and then have to get himself, or have someone like Max, get him out of it. Centineo’s affable nature and dry wit help keep us on his side, but it does get exhausting by the latter episodes. There’s only so many times you can watch the guy bleed or barf on himself without feeling a bit uncomfortable.
And there’s not a lot of characters to root for outside of Hendricks. Max is mercurial and brutal, as her Russian spy character is painted to be. Haddock also has good chemistry with Centineo but it’s not sizzling. On the positive side, his roommate Terence (Daniel Quincy Annoh) and his recent ex Hannah (Fivel Stewart) are two who actually care for him. But he can’t be entirely honest with them because of the secrecy of his job, which makes them relatively passive in the story. And Bruun’s Ferber is a genuine hoot as Owen’s reluctant peer/mentor who explains CIA terms, codes, and the inherent dangers of Hendricks’ actions. Every scene with him crackles with absurdity and lightens the mood of the show, which is really needed more often than not. The series might as well be a Machiavellian handbook, with a spikey meanness that simmers throughout. Everyone is stabbing someone in the back, keeping secrets, or setting someone up. And maybe that should be expected with government lawyers, but Owen followed this path to honor his father who died in Afghanistan. That purity of intent gets mocked a lot by Max, and his hardened peers, so much so that it leaves you thinking often either that the CIA is kinda awful, or “Geez, give the kid a break!”
There’s no half-watching here or you’ll be lost.
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As a spy series, executive producers Alexi Hawley (The Rookie) and Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) have made this a dense story to follow. There’s no half-watching here or you’ll be lost. And there’s too much “if X does Y, then Z happens” repeated across the eight episodes. The quiet moments between Owen and his friends, or in less fraught moments with Max, are very welcome considering the dizzying pace of learning about Russian intelligence ops, field operatives, and assets that veer into the story.
If you love spy shows, The Recruit isn’t pulling any punches so it will scratch the thriller itch. And Centineo’s Hendricks is so unlike most spy leads we see today that it does keep you watching.
Verdict
The Recruit is a solid vehicle for Noah Centineo’s leading man talents. It certainly has no problem putting his character through his paces, which makes him less suave and more sympathetic than just about all of his big and small screen CIA spy peers. It does require some patience in its dense story and watching Centineo constantly being put through the wringer, but it definitely manages to scratch that spy thriller itch.
