Criminal

Last summer, there was a little movie called Self/Less.  It kind of came and left from theaters in a matter of weeks, so you probably didn't see it.  Don't worry, you did not miss anything.  But if you did happen to see it, Criminal will feel very familiar to you.  Both are silly and ineffective thrillers involving swapping memories from one person to another, and both feature Ryan Reynolds, who should probably just reject any script that involves brain swapping from now on.  Even some of the basic plot points of the two movies are exactly the same.  The one thing that Criminal has over the earlier film is the distinction of having the worst Kevin Costner performance in a long time.

In Self/Less, Ben Kingsley played a grumpy and dying New York millionaire who signed onto a project to have his brain and memories transferred to Ryan Reynolds' body, so that he could go on living.  The plot involved Reynolds (with Kingsley's memories) living it up, until he realized that the experiment was not exactly all that ethical (big shock), and that the body he was inhabiting may have been murdered.  He tried to solve the mystery, and wound up getting close with Reynolds' old wife and daughter.  Criminal changes a few plot details, but more or less tells the same story.  This time, Reynolds is a London-based CIA agent who is in the middle of a case as the film opens, only to get caught by some shady anarchist terrorists who torture and kill him in order to get some information on someone who has a flash drive with a lot of government and military secrets.  How does the head of the local bureau (Gary Oldman) respond to this?  He calls upon a doctor (Tommy Lee Jones), who is conducting an experiment where they can put someone's memories into the head of someone else.  His plan is to take the information from the fallen agent, and put it into an unwilling test subject, so that he can tell them all the information that the dead agent uncovered before he was killed.

The test subject that the good doctor chooses to have the agent's memories and knowledge transferred into is a convict named Jericho Stewart (Kevin Costner).  We are told that Jericho has no empathy whatsoever, due to a childhood injury to his frontal lobe, which turned him into a violent sociopath with no emotions or remorse whatsoever.  The memory transfer procedure is a success, but naturally, Jericho has no intention of cooperating or sharing the info that's in his head.  He wants to solve the case himself, and uses the memories transferred into his brain to track down the agent's family, which includes his wife (Gal Gadot) and sweet little daughter (Lara Decaro).  With the memories swirling around in his head, Jericho feels compassion for the agent's family, and wants to protect them as various terrorists keep on popping up, trying to kill him and stop him from uncovering the truth.  If you think this plot sounds ridiculous, you don't know the half of it.  You would think that if a movie like this was able to attract talent like Reynolds, Oldman, Costner and Jones, this would at least have to be fun.  Unfortunately, everything about this movie is underwhelming, especially the performances.

There is something just so perfunctory about Criminal.  It never achieves any tension or excitement, despite a number of very bloody action sequences.  We don't feel the excitement build, like in an action movie that knows what it's doing.  There are also large chunks of the plot that largely go unexplained.  We never exactly learn why the main villain, a Spanish businessman who wants to take down all the world's governments, is doing what he's doing.  He gives an interview on a news show at one point, explaining that all governments are corrupt and should be wiped out, but we never exactly learn his motivation, or how he got to his extreme views.  Likewise, the scenes where Jericho is supposed to be growing close to the family of the man whose memories have been implanted in his head have absolutely no emotional impact whatsoever.  Everything feels muted and strangely lethargic. 

But then, a lot of this may have to do with the cast, who never seem invested in the material they have to work with.  There are big names here, but nobody brought their A-Game.  I said earlier that this is probably the worst Kevin Costner performance in years, and I mean it.  He grunts, mumbles and slurs his words so much that his portrayal of a hardened criminal comes across not as a violent sociopath, but more like the Saturday Night Live version of Nick Nolte.  He gets a lot of unintentional laughs here, but at least you can say he makes an impression of some kind, which is more than I can say for anyone else.  Oldman yells his lines and chews every bit of scenery he can find, yet still comes across as perfectly bland, while Tommy Lee Jones barely seems to be making an effort.  Finally, there is Gal Gadot.  This is her third movie so far this year (the other two being Triple 9 and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice), so Hollywood is obviously banking on her to be the next big thing.  However, just like in her other films, she is given so little to do, she just kind of disappears into the background.  We'll see if she can carry a film on her own in Summer 2017's Wonder Woman movie, but from what I have seen so far, I am having my doubts.

Criminal almost seems to be designed to be forgotten as soon as it's over.  Aside from a bizarre Costner performance, nothing resonates and nothing stays with you.  I'm sure most who see it will forget it as soon as possible.  I'm planning to do the same thing myself.

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