– By Cate Marquis –
Spy thriller ‘Criminal’ is cringe-worthy mess
The spy thriller “Criminal” is billed as Kevin Costner “as you have never seen him.” Costner may have intended this role to launch a new tough action phase for his career but it seems like the star can’t quite let go of his nice guy persona. So we get a prison-harden sociopath killer who line-butts and takes another guy’s sandwich at a restaurant, in this laughably bad science fiction-tinged spy actioner.
The film opens in London, where CIA agent Bill Pope (Ryan Reynolds) calls his wife (Gal Gadot) and their little daughter (Lara Decaro), while trying to evade the enemy agents trailing him. Pope has hidden a hacker known as “The Dutchman” (Michael Pitt) in a safe location, after agreeing to give him $10 million and a new identity in exchange for a program that can seize control of the entire U.S. military weapons system. But a Spanish billionaire businessman with a plan for international anarchy, Hagbardaka Heimbahl (Jordi Molla), wants the program and sends a team of assassins to capture Pope and find the Dutchman’s location. Unfortunately, Pope is killed, so neither Heimbahl or Pope’s boss Quaker Wells (Gary Oldman) can find out the Dutchman’s whereabouts.
Wells recovers Pope’s body and keeps it alive, with hopes that an experimental memory transfer program will give access to the information. The experimental program is the work of American Dr. Franks (Tommy Lee Jones), who has found the perfect host for the memory transfer, a criminal named Jerico (Costner).
Oh, “Criminal” tries to set up Costner as one scary dude, introducing him in a cell where he wears a collar and is chained to the ceiling, because he is some dangerous. But Costner’s Jerico is no suave Hannibal Lecter – he is a crude brain-damaged brute who has spent most of his violent life in prison. As a rare case of a person with an undeveloped, blank-slate frontal cortex, he is singled out by researcher Franks as the perfect human test subject for memory transfer. The need to find The Dutchman forces a premature launch of the experimental procedure, and short-fused CIA leader Wells orders both the scientist and the sociopath killer host flown to London to make the transfer of agent Pope’s memories, with hopes of uncovering the computer genius’ location before enemy agents do. Of course, the memory transfer also gives Jerico a drive to complete Pope’s mission but it also gives him memories of the dead agent’s wife and daughter, and their happy life together.
Far-fetched? Laughable? You bet – but that is not the end of the problems with this sorry action/thriller. “Criminal” tries to make up for its absurd story with breathless action, spectacular car crashes and a high-body count. But it seems that Costner was looking for something more in this story that mixes elements of “Bourne Identity” and “Flowers for Algernon.” At first, it seems the memory transfer has failed, and Oldman’s Wells quickly decides to abandon the plan, and send the criminal back to prison. Costner’s convict proves more resourceful and murderous than expected and kills his guards to escape. Once loose in London, memories and new skills slowly seep into his damaged skull, and with a little help from Dr. Franks, who has gained his trust, Costner’s Jerico starts to discover his more human side, particularly when he breaks into Pope’s home but only steals a few things instead of murdering the widow and daughter. Dr. Franks tells him the memories will only last a few days, and so Jerico sets out to complete Pope’s mission.
This is gifted cast but they turn in some of the most ham-handed performances of their careers in this mess of a film. Oldman is particularly bad as the impatient, short-tempered lead spy, but Costner is pretty bad too, ordering in French from a food counter, then joking in a redneck drawl about “talking Spanish.” Much of the film is on this embarrassing level, although in the scenes with the dead agent’s wife and daughter, Costner is almost touching – but then he is in more familiar acting territory.
The action is hysterically fast as scenery-chewing villain Heimbahl and his incompetent agents track down Jerico. The action is interspersed with gentler scenes with Pope’s widow and the daughter, who thinks Jerico was a friend of her dad. None of this makes sense, and the over-the-top ending caps off the whole big mess.
Despite the allure of its big-name cast, “Criminal” is one sad, sorry film, one that even the most committed action fans will want to avoid.
© Cate Marquis
