The Recruit

Trivia: Roger Donaldson's mother Dorothy appears as a bystander in a street scene where Colin Farrell is running for a taxi.

Trivia: In the book of fallen CIA operatives that Colin Farrell sees on his first day, two names (Deryck Blake and Andrew McAlpine) appear: they are the film's property master and production designer, respectively.

Trivia: Lately, Hollywood is pairing young actors with older, character-actors the younger ones are repeatedly compared with (because of their looks or their acting styles): check this movie (Farrell-Pacino), Spy Games (Pitt-Redford), The Patriot (Ledger-Gibson) and The Score (Norton-DeNiro, Norton-Brando).

Factual error: In the movie Burke states that none of the computers has a floppy disk drive so that no information can be copied and smuggled out, but Leila uses a USB device. With all their technology and computer scientists, the CIA, or anyone who is semi-computer knowledgeable should know that information can be copied through the USB port and they would have been secured accordingly.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: A good number of mice and keyboards connect to the computers through the USB ports. If they took out all but two ports, and left those for the mouse and keyboard, it could be possible. If Leila pulled out the keyboard plug she could put in the USB device and copy the files. Heck, she could have even opened the computer up herself and installed a hidden USB drive (smuggling in the tools with her coffee mug of course). She would just have to be sneaky about it, and that's nothing unusual for these characters.

Not only is the original "Corrected entry" valid, it's understated. Burke actually said "Langley's computers don't have disk drives" - not just no floppy drive. In a high-security environment, such a system would be configured so that no USB port could communicate with an external drive; even more likely, the workstations would be dumb terminals - just keyboard, mouse, and monitor; and that's exactly what they appear to be in Layla's office area. So, showing a USB port built into Layla's keyboard and communicating with a USB drive belies a major part of Burke's story, and if Layla were able to do that, the system would immediately "see" it. It's the ersatz "Correction" that's mistaken, since it describes only ordinary commercial computer systems.

More mistakes in The Recruit

James Clayton: All I know about the CIA is that they're a bunch of fat, old white guys who fell asleep when we needed them most.

More quotes from The Recruit

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