The Recruit–Not Your Ordinary Nube
Owen Hendricks (Noah Centineo of “All the Boys I Loved Before”), a newly minted lawyer hired by the CIA, is drafted into an investigation of a Russian double-agent, Max (Laura Haddock of “Downton Abbey: A New Era“). She is an invaluable asset who can air the dirty laundry of both the CIA and Russian intelligence. A brilliant survivor who has to please two masters, Max soon manipulates Owen into negotiating her release from prison, implying she will blackmail the CIA if he fails. Will Max reveal the CIA’s most heinous secrets?
A subplot of The Recruit (Netflix 2022 mini-series) gives Owen more dimension over and above being a clueless neophyte CIA lawyer. He has a beautiful roommate, Hannah Owen (Fivel Stewart) who is now his ex-girlfriend but the only one he feels confident would help him in a crisis, which he seems to be constantly in.
Owen finds himself in a complicated relationship with Max, who is a muscular fighter, violent, fierce, as well as beautiful and sensuous. Plus, she is teaching him what being a spy actually involves, not the veneer of intelligence he has accepted as truth in the CIA. For example, Max demonstrates, strapped to a polygraph machine, how to override the biological metrics and thereby alter the lie-detector’s results.
Highly recommend! This is entertainment, not spectacular writing or pacing. Think: The Protege (see my December 20, 2021 review) or Nikita . At times, for a spy thriller, the action seems straight-forward, almost formulaic with its car chases and hiding from the enemy gripping semi-automatic weapons. But binge-view to see how the two enemy surveillance teams outwit each other, spiral downward into never-ending surprise twists, coiled unpredictability, and tragic losses. A crazy killer-ending promises a second season replete with cliffhangers!
Availability: Netflix streaming