Lionsgate
Sometimes I see that a thriller is trying to make me think, and it doesn’t always work. Sometimes they have heady themes but the script is struggling with conveying them. Sometimes the actors are great and convey them without need of the script, sometimes they’re weighed down by it. Sometimes it’s just a mixed bag. But a lot of themes are interesting, like identity and loss, memory and continuity. These are interesting things to explore, and maybe throw in a bunch of murder too.
Criminal comes from relatively new director Ariel Vromen and is a sort of quasi-science fiction movie. The writers said they were inspired by the writings of futurist Ray Kurzweil, which makes sense, considering the conceit is about saving the memories of someone who died. We start with Ryan Reynolds playing CIA agent Bill Pope, who is running from a weird set of caricatures. There’s Elsa Mueller (Antje Traue) who is the Teutonic sexy evil lady killer character, and Elsa is working for anarchist Xavier Heimdahl (Jordi Mollà) who is the mincing Spanish sociopath who wants to “change the world.”
I didn’t even realize that was a stereotype, but it seems like one. Also, Heimdahl is bizarrely incorrectly credited on IMDB and Wikipedia as Hagbardaka Heimbahl, which should’ve been noticed, since several people are also credited as things like “Heimdahl’s Thugs.” Also, Heimdahl is a clear reference to the Norse god that is said to guard to entrance to Asgard (played by Idris Elba in the Thor movies).
Anyway, the Macguffin is a hacker called The Dutchman, real name Jan Stroop (Michael Pitt), who has gained control of the missile defense systems of the US. There’s a lot of meaningless computer magic in this movie, but I think it needs to be ignored to get to the real plot. Bill Pope gets killed trying to keep the secret of Jan’s location from Heimdahl, so that means it’s time for the ol’ switcheroo!
Gary Oldman as the chief CIA guy in London, Quaker Wells (he’s playing an American), with assistant Marta Lynch (Alice Eve, another Brit playing American for some reason) get in touch with the craggly Dr. Franks (a craggly Tommy Lee Jones). It seems the good doctor has experimented with memory transfers in rats. So … no time like the present for human trials! They find a murderer in prison, Jericho Stewart (Kevin Costner), a legitimate mentally disturbed criminal with a malfunctioning frontal lobe. It’s that magic brain thing that makes him a good candidate.
I feel like I’ve already spent a long time discussing the setup, which is really about creating the conflict. Jericho fights against his dark impulses with the new memories from Bill, including the good feelings towards Bill’s wife Jill (Gal Gadot) and daughter Emma (Lara Decaro). That’s alongside Jericho’s confusion about whether or not to save the world while the CIA works to get him to help them while Heimdahl’s crew tries to do the same.
There are a lot of pretty decent action scenes that are mostly on the realistic and slightly bloody side. Jericho kills a lot of innocent people but we are asked to treat him with empathy because he’s changing due to the new memories. Kevin Costner is really excellent here, being both convincing as a tough thug and a conflicted monster who is beginning to care for his family. The others are mixed. Gal Gadot is pretty good too, with a few problematic scenes and a few affirming ones. Tommy Lee Jones does so little, it’s hard to say, and Gary Oldman is doing a milder version of other things he’s done.
The villains aren’t bad, although they are often very campy. That’s a bit tonally dissonant, something the movie has a problem with in a few other places. The scenes with the Dutchman are a bit odd, trying to build empathy for him, but it’s just another thing to keep track of. When they brought in a plot about Russians, I thought it was too much, and ultimately pointless.
I think the ideas here are interesting, and they spend some decent time working through them. It’s such a weird idea, but I like how far the movie is willing to go with it. Perhaps the arc of redemption is hard to completely swallow, but there’s a kind of visceral thrill seeing a sociopath take down a worse sociopath. Thus the whole “antihero” doing what a hero wouldn’t dare because of their moral code. Jericho builds his own code as the movie continues, but it’s pretty predictable.
Overall, it was fun enough and I liked the heady ideas, even if the movie goes a bit too far at times. It will be another forgettable entry in the “attempting to be smart” thriller book, but hey, that’s the movies for you.
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