Spy Thriller The Recruit Is a Nifty Netflix Upgrade for Noah Centineo

How are all the Netflix pretty boys doing? Jacob Elordi made a clean jump from Kissing Booth to HBO prestige, and is now working with such big-name film talent as Emerald Fennell and Sofia Coppola (playing Elvis!) KJ Apa is edging out of the purgatory that is Riverdale, wrapping up its final season but with nothing tremendously exciting on the horizon. What about Noah Centineo? The break-out heartthrob of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before starred in four subsequent teen rom coms for the streaming giant, and after putting in hard time for about five years, he has been rewarded with… another Netflix property. Thankfully, The Recruit plays a lot more to Centineo’s charismatic and comedic strengths, adding more flair, drama and—deep breath—sex to his Netflix portfolio. He confidently leads a spotty but overall impressive spy romp that’ll make for a suitable holiday season watch.

We start on bad footing, meeting Noah’s character on a snowy field mission that goes belly-up, before cutting back to his early days before he’s ever involved in anything dangerous. Jumping in media res before cutting back to where the story should begin rarely works as a structural tool, but it’s made especially egregious in this case, as there’s absolutely no contextual information for us to even appreciate the danger at play—and we won’t return to this scene until the last half hour of the season. Who is Noah’s character? Is he supposed to be here? Where is here, what are they doing? Who’s shooting guns at who? What is the jeopardy, what’s at stake? Once more, who is this man?!

This man is Owen Hendricks, a rookie lawyer for the General Consul at the CIA. He’s charming, quick-witted, and instantly in over his head, especially when he gets involved with a former agent (or, asset) who wants to reveal devastating state secrets (or, graymail). He has two smart, attractive roommates, Hannah (Fivel Stewart) and Terence (Daniel Quincy Annoh), a suitably stern boss, Nyland (Vondie Curtis-Hall), and a couple colleagues with the sole purpose of leaving Owen in their dust, Violet (Aarti Mann) and Lester (Colton Dunn). Over the course of 8 episodes (all of which were available for review), characters undercut each other, beg for favours, and deceive for their own benefit. A lot of research from show creator Alexi Hawley has gone into a variety of CIA lingo, procedures, and personalities; it really feels like you’re immersed in an authentically complex (sometimes laughably so) intelligence bureaucracy. As well as this, Owen’s newbie status means we get to learn a lot of this intel organically as he does, always at the quick, urgent pace that CIA field work demands.

Owen himself proves a handy asset in high-pressure negotiations, finding convoluted workarounds and loopholes in the heat of battle that are the lifeblood to intelligence work. Apart from testing out how much one man can sound like Mark Ruffalo, Centineo’s boundless charm is well suited to Owen’s assured confidence; his casting makes more and more sense every time Owen has to blag his way through tense encounters. The rest of the cast have seemingly gotten on Noah’s wavelength—no matter how dense the plotting becomes, no-one drops the smarmy irritation they regard every other character with.