"Criminal" is an enjoyable but flawed film that, like its protagonist, struggles with its own muddled identity. Director Ariel Vromen attempts to juggle a plot that is one part introspective psychological drama and one part high-tech spy thriller, but fails to effectively deliver on either level. The film, which features a solid performance from Kevin Costner, teases and tugs at some promising dramatic threads before the flimsy action movie plot completely unravels at the end.
The film opens with a CIA operative Bill Pope (Ryan Reynolds, in what amounts to an extended cameo) in London. Pope's mission is to deliver a payoff to the Dutchman, a hacker who has implausibly gained access to the entire United States military defense grid. The Dutchman (Michael Pitt), who realizes he is in over his head — what with being able to launch nukes from his laptop and all — has cut a deal with Pope to hide out in an undisclosed safe location while the agent arranges for a ransom consisting of millions of dollars of cash and a passport in a duffel bag in return for a flash drive containing the Dutchman's "wormhole" into the defense system.
Why a super-hacker with his finger on the nuclear button can't manage a better escape plan than cooling his heels in a public building waiting on a bag of cash is beyond me. Hasn't he heard of wire transfers and Swiss bank accounts, the preferred method of Hollywood cyber-crooks? Was his PayPal account suspended?
We never learn the answer to these burning questions because Pope is intercepted prior to making the exchange by the agents of a Spanish millionaire hacker anarchist named Hagbardaka Heimbahl (Jordi Molla) who wants to use the wormhole to destroy the world's governments, presumably by nuking the planet back into the Stone Age.
Heimbahl, who seems to be some sort of cross between Julian Assange and a Bond villain, proceeds to torture Pope to reveal the location of the Dutchman and his wormhole. Pope, a good soldier to the end, dies without selling out his secrets ... or, apparently, notifying his supervisor (Gary Oldman) as to the exact whereabouts of the CIA's most wanted man. Sigh.
So, with the Dutchman lost in the wind, an oxymoron of a super villain on his trail and a top agent dead, the CIA turns to neuroscientist Dr. Micah Franks (Tommy Lee Jones, tragically underused in this film). Franks has developed an experimental process by which he can imprint the memories of a dead person onto the brain of another human being. Unfortunately, the prime candidate for this procedure is a death-row psychopath named Jericho Stewart (Kevin Costner). Jericho suffered a traumatic (in all senses of the word) childhood brain injury that has left the frontal lobe of his brain underdeveloped and thus ideal for the imprinting process. The same injury has also left him incapable of feeling normal emotions or understanding societal behavioral norms, with consequences that are sometimes hilarious or horrific.
And the result is the film's central premise: A brutal convict is endowed with the memories and skills of a dead secret agent and must finish his mission to save the free world. Discarding all the spy game mumbo-jumbo for a moment, it's a concept full of potential. Jericho is a modern-day Frankenstein's Monster, a violent criminal reborn into a new life and given the opportunity to reconnect with his humanity and in the process redeem himself as a hero. Amid the sometimes preposterous circumstances, Costner gives a sincere performance that is at times funny and ferocious. Watching Costner in "Criminal" I could not help but think back to 1993's "A Perfect World" and lament what he and director Vromen might have done with this role if not hamstrung by the half-baked action thriller elements of the script.
With a stripped down, low-tech plot "Criminal" could have been a taut, suspenseful thriller much like 2013's "Mud," where the audience is never really quite sure whether the film's protagonist is a "good guy" or "bad guy." That potential can be seen in the scenes between Costner and the dead agent's wife (played by Gal Gadot) and daughter (Lara Decaro), scenes which tantalizingly skim the surface of emotional entanglement and moral dilemma but never take the deep dive that would elevate this film beyond a dressed-up action vehicle.
In the end, any dramatic credibility that has been built up is dissipated when Jericho's previous wrongdoing — not to mention the handful of cops and innocent bystanders that are injured and even killed in the process of completing his mission — is hand-waved away without consequence, seemingly in favor of setting up a potential sequel or even "Jason Bourne" style franchise. If that truly is the case, then it is doubly disappointing because it is unlikely this film will see a follow-up given how badly the filmmakers missed the opportunity to make "Criminal" something special.
3 Yaps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_gS2UcwWWA&w=585