This truly abysmal CIA thriller, jangling with cliches and implausibilities, is all the more disappointing as it comes from director Roger Donaldson, who brought us the first-rate Cuban missile drama Thirteen Days. The old-hand-plus-new-boy format is reprised - we saw it recently with Robert Redford and Brad Pitt in Tony Scott's Spy Game, which for all its faults was a gutsier movie than this.

Al Pacino is a terrible self-parody as the old Agency hand Walter Burke, croaking and staring his way through the film. Burke tries to recruit brilliant young computer whiz James Clayton (Colin Farrell). "You're just a bunch of guys who fell asleep when we needed you most!" snarls the reluctant Clayton, which is as far as the movie wishes to go in discussing that terrible day. But he's talked into going to the Agency's recruitment boot-camp nonetheless, where the trainees are put through tiresome role-play mind games. One of Burke's old buddies fondly remembers how he took out a Hamas terrorist. "Not Hamas - Abu Nidal," Burke corrects him, fastidiously.

The gorgeous, pouting Clayton falls in love with fellow trainee Layla (Bridget Moynahan), but what do you know? Burke says she's a mole, with - gulp! - Algerian parentage. So the youngster has to choose between his heart and Uncle Sam. The trainees are repeatedly told cellphones are a real risk and leaving them on might give away their positions: an admonition that plays its part in the nonsensical plot's final, dull twist. But Colin Farrell and Al Pacino repeatedly need to have top-secret conversations. And how do they do this? Why, on their cellphones of course. Yikes.

Once unmasked, the secret kingpin reveals the price of treachery: "Three million dollars - cash!" Pure Dr Evil. But, timid to the very last, the movie prefers not to disclose to whom the money was paid. Abu Nidal, maybe?