Trama

A brilliant young CIA trainee is asked by his mentor to help find a mole in the Agency.

In an era when the country's first line of defense, intelligence, is more important than ever, this story opens the CIA's infamous closed doors and gives an insider's view into the Agency: how trainees are recruited, how they are prepared for the spy game, and what they learn to survive. James Clayton might not have the attitude of a typical recruit, but he is one of the smartest graduating seniors in the country - and he's just the person that Walter Burke wants in the Agency. James regards the CIA's mission as an intriguing alternative to an ordinary life, but before he becomes an Ops Officer, James has to survive the Agency's secret training ground, where green recruits are molded into seasoned veterans. As Burke teaches him the ropes and the rules of the game, James quickly rises through the ranks and falls for Layla, one of his fellow recruits. But just when James starts to question his role and his cat-and-mouse relationship with his mentor, Burke taps him for a special assignment to root out a mole. As the suspense builds toward a gripping climax, it soon becomes clear that the CIA's old maxims are true: "trust no one" and "nothing is what it seems."—wild62

James Clayton is one of the top prospects in the new crop of CIA recruits. His intelligence and unconventional attitude attract the attention of veteran Walter Burke who squires him through the Agency's difficult training courses and helps him to quickly rise through the ranks. Clayton is then given a special assignment, to root out a suspected mole that has infiltrated the Agency.—IMDb Editors

James Clayton (Colin Farrell) is a hacker & his skills impress CIA recruiter Walter Burke (Al Pacino), who wants to induct him. James has posted notifications on internet boards looking for information on his missing father Edward Clayton. James Clayton is a prodigious programmer studying nonlinear Cryptography at MIT, collaborating with a group of peers to create Spartacus, a surveillance program that can enslave any computer's audiovisual hardware to the master computer via the internet. His group showcases the software to Dell at a campus fair drawing substantial interest in its uses. James is not interested, but when Burke mentions that he knew James missing father for several years, James signs up. Burke prides himself on being a scary judge of talent. James wants to know more about his father, but Burke strings him along.

During the testing James meets fellow recruit Layla Moore (Bridget Moynahan). James & Layla are selected for the next level of training at covert CIA facility, The Farm. James develops a rivalry with Zack (Gabriel Macht) who is James' competition for top of the class. During his lectures, Burke talks about how the CIA job pays nothing (he makes $75,000 per year), he has no family, and no fame (the CIA officers do not even get to wear their medals). After recruitment, Burke refuses to talk to James about his father and says that they are not friend. Any congeniality he showed earlier was only to recruit him. The entire class is put through a gamut of physical, psychological, spy gadgets, explosives, arms, firing accuracy, bug planting and other assorted training modules. Burke tells the class that everything is a test, and that one candidate will be selected as a Non-official cover operative, which is the most coveted position in the CIA field operations.

Layla displays the willingness to use emotional strings to fool James just to complete her training mission. James is given a mission to go into a bar and pick up a girl whose has an intention to have sex with him. James finds Layla in the bar who spins a sob story about being kicked off the Farm and staying in a motel. Layla says that she felt an emotional bond with James and wants to have sex with her. James agrees but turns out Layla was on the mission to stop James from completing his mission, and she succeeded. James gets back at Layla during an exercise to train to fool the polygraph test. Layla was under questioning and James asks her if she really intended to have sex with him that night, and Layla lies. The incident brings them closer, and Burke notices this.

James & Layla are pitted against each other by Walter, including an exercise where James is "kidnapped" & "tortured" for several days to give the name of his instructor, & finally cracks when the kidnapper mention sexually assaulting Layla. He reveals Burke's name, at which point it's revealed that the whole experience was part of the exercise that the class was observing, including Layla, and that James failed by breaking. He is then removed from the Farm.

But Walter tells him that his dumping is a cover for counterintelligence ops as a non-official cover operative, or "NOC". His mission is to spy on Layla whom Walter thinks is a mole trying to steal a computer virus from the CIA facility. Burke explains that Layla is suspected of working with foreign agents to steal CIA secrets, specifically a highly sensitive computer virus called "ICE-9" because it transmits via the electrical grid rather than telecommunications and is easily capable of disabling all electrical devices on the planet instantly. Burke explains that James was picked specifically from MIT, after matching his profile with Layla. Layla now trusts him, even loves him. And James has to use that to expose Layla. Burke gets James a low level, low security job at Langley as his cover story.

James puts himself in spots where Layla sees him, and they start talking and meeting. Burke asks James to break into Layla's computer to see if she has accessed the program. James has sex with Layla & bugs her coat. He finds from Layla's home computer that Layla is stealing the virus. But James tells Burke that she does not have the full virus yet, as she is taking it out in pieces. James follows her to her contact at a Metro station, whom he pursues & kills & who turns to be a fellow trainee Zack at The Farm.

Believing both of them to be traitors, James confronts Layla who tells him that Zack was the NOC, not him, and that she was tasked with assessing the security protocols of the CIA headquarters because it was feared that someone else was stealing CIA material. Layla claims that the program that she stole was only a dummy, a test program. But James reviews the code and says that the code is real.

James then goes to a meet with Burke wherein he confronts Burke about what's really happening. Burke claims that Zack's death was faked, that the gun Burke gave James is loaded with non-lethal ammunition, and that everyone is intending to rendezvous for debrief momentarily. However, Burke catches James off guard and shoots at him, narrowly missing him but blowing out the rear window of his vehicle in the process, proving that the gun was in fact loaded with live ammunition and therefore Zack is indeed dead. James escapes and hides in an abandoned building, where he is pursued by Burke.

Burke tells Clayton, boasting that he organized the scheme in order to sell the virus. He also shatters Clayton's hopes about his father by saying that the story that his father was a CIA agent was only a ruse to trick James into befriending Burke. Clayton agrees to give Burke the laptop containing the completed virus and shows Burke the screen running his own software program Spartacus, apparently relaying Burke's entire confession back to CIA headquarters.

Burke becomes incensed, chasing Clayton outside, where a CIA SWAT team has assembled to track them down. Unknown to Burke (Pacino), however, Clayton's (Farrell's) link to the CIA was a fake. The CIA had no knowledge of Burke's treachery and was there to arrest Clayton. Not knowing this, Burke rails at his unjust treatment by the CIA, and the CIA agents realize that Burke is the traitor. Upon discovering that he himself had foiled his own plan, he commits suicide-by-cop.

Afterward, Layla consoles Clayton before he heads back to Langley for debriefing. On the drive to Langley another CIA employee tells Clayton "You were born to do this, it's in your blood", confirming that his father did in fact work for the CIA.