TL;DR – A fascinating fun romp through a situation that was always a hair’s breadth away from complete implosion.

Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix service that viewed this series.

The Recruit Review –

I didn’t know what to make when I sat down to watch that first season back in 2022, but I was honestly surprised by how well it walked the line between comedy and farce. Noah Centineo takes a big swing away from the romantic comedies he was known for and nails them. Given how fun the first season was, well, when I heard there was a Season Two out, I had to give it a watch.

So, to set the scene, after getting kidnapped in Ostrava, Czech Republic, at the end of Season One. Owen (Noah Centineo) finds himself face-to-face with a murderer with a gun against his head and someone he didn’t know was alive. While he managed to get out of that situation with some of his blood still in his body, just, he was benched when he got back to the CIA. Even though several people still want him dead or want to drop the failure of the first operation squarely on his lap. Stuck in limbo until the guillotine falls. That is, until a letter lands on his desk with a hope of redemption in the air. All he has to do is go back to Seoul, where he grew up, and not be radioactive to everyone he comes in contact with. Now, from here, we will be looking at the season as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.   

This season we, mostly, ditch our Central European setting and spend time in South Korea, and I think this was a good shake-up to the formula. Korea is a fascinating choice for a settling like this because everyone is friendly, to a point, and it gives the show a lot of space to manoeuvre. It kind of reminded me of the vibe that they struck in From Russia with Love, where everyone was following each other but mostly chilling with it until things fell apart. Oh, and do they ever fall apart, but then that should be the norm when Owen is around, and I like that nearly every character in the show understands that and either 1) tries to get away from him or 2) tries to make sure when it goes pear-shaped, he is there to take the fall.

One clear thing is that a lot of this season was actually filmed in Korea. While a lot of the Eastern European and Russian location was clearly Vancouver, I see you brutalist university architecture. Walking the streets of Seoul and other Korean cities has a unique vibe to it that I think they captured well here. On that production front, I also respected that there was an intentionality to the needle drops in the show. So often, they just dump it in the background, pretending they are a musical score. But here, you can feel that the timing and the way they interact with the world was a key design. We also get some solid action beats, including a beat down in a Seoul nightclub, an amusing, if silly, bike chase across the city, oh and a guy who hid a knife in a pair of crutches and attacked Owen on the airport tarmac.   

Now, to be clear, so much of this series works based solely on the natural charism and charm of Noah Centineo, which is there in excess, as it was in Season One. But they wisely counterpoint this charm by putting him in the most amusing situations. That man gets the stuffing kicked out of him in almost every episode. However, I did like that there was quite a bit of character progression in this season, to the point that he was willing to be a real prick to give someone else the closure they desperately needed. While he still is quite naive and wants the best when the CIA just wants to put a bullet in someone, he is also not as green behind the gills as he was in Season One. He is the heart of the show and is very much the reason that they are able to walk the line between having fun and not becoming a farce.

Thankfully, Noah is supported by a cavalcade of character actors who make each scene a delight to watch. There are the other lawyers who constantly shift from wanting to destroy him to riding his success to the top. Aarti Mann, Colton Dunn, Kaylah Zander & Kristian Bruun all have this fantastic chemistry that just shines throughout the whole series. Vondie Curtis-Hall owns every scene he is in with a presence that you just can’t deny. The new additions of Teo Yoo and Young-Ah Kim were great. Teo Yoo fits that accomplice/antagonist mould very well, and Young-Ah Kim’s scenes with Kristian Bruun were an absolute delight. Then you have Nathan Fillion and James Purefoy drop in for some delightful recurring work, and it is so much fun.          

In the end, do we recommend The Recruit? Well, we started in a ditch in Poland and ended in a mess in Vladivostok, with some battles on an airport tarmac and an awkward bike chase through Seoul in between. Overall, I feel that it rose to the strengths of the First Season well, and I had a blast watching it. If nothing else, fire extinguisher-to-head contact moments always work in cinema. Have you seen The Recruit yet? Let us know what you thought in the comments below.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of The Recruit
Directed by – Julian Holmes, Jessica Yu, Viet Nguyen, John Hyams & Alexi Hawley
Written by – Alexi Hawley, Brian Oh, Hadi Nicholas Deeb, Sue Chung, Maya Goldsmith &  Neda Davarpanah
Created by – Alexi Hawley
Production/Distribution Companies – Hypnotic, Perfectmon Pictures, Lionsgate Television & Netflix
Starring – Noah Centineo, Colton Dunn, Aarti Mann, Fivel Stewart, Kristian Bruun, Kaylah Zander, Maddie Hasson, Angel Parker, Teo Yoo & Vondie Curtis-Hall with Nathan Fillion, James Purefoy, Daniel Quincy Annoh, Do Hyun Shin, Young-Ah Kim, Sanghee Lee, Hiro Kanagawa, Eui Sung Kim, Felix Solis, Brooke Smith, Devika Bhise, Omar Maskati & Daniel Jun and Jesse Collin, Bruce Baek, Yurij Kis, Ryuta Kato, Bulat Nasibullin, Alexi Hawley, Alana Hawley Purvis, Andrew Woo, Nicolas Pancine, Vera Chu, Nico Wan, Arghavan Jenati, Alan Ramon Ward, Genevieve Fleming, Taras Kostyuk, Amro Majzoub, Leslie Kwan, Gino Akbari, Tony Ali & Aias Dalman
Episodes Covered – Y.N.A.H.Y.A.L., Y.A.R.A.C.O.T.D.O.P., H.H.I.I.T.K.A.L., A.T.N.W.H.Y.P.A.B.H., W.S.T.W.T.P. & I.D.N.W.T.BD.I.