Respond to these rapid questions in our Criminal quiz and we will tell you which Criminal character you are. Play it now.
“Criminal” is the kind of baffling production that leaves viewers reeling from the absurdities they have just witnessed and wondering how something like that could ever be produced in the first place. In spite of the fact that I am in possession of not a single piece of evidence to support any of this, I do have a wild hypothesis regarding how it came into being. My speculation is that during a break near the end of production on Oliver Stone’s controversial epic “JFK” 25 years ago, co-stars Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, and Tommy Lee Jones got together and remarked about how calm and easygoing the set was and how they should all get together again someday. My theory is that this conversation took place during a break towards the end of production on the film. In the end, a deal was struck wherein they agreed to get together again after a quarter of a century and do one of two things at the occasion of their get-together. If all three of them had been successful in winning an Oscar by that point, they would get together for a relaxing week or so to hang out and talk about the good old days. On the other hand, if even one of them had not won an Oscar by that time, they would instead make a pact to look for the lamest and most pathetic excuse for an action movie that was currently available and devote their time and abilities to working on that instead. This may not be the most plausible scenario imaginable, especially the part about Oldman still not having an Oscar, but it makes a hell of a lot more sense than this film and is frankly more entertaining to boot, which should give you an indication as to how rotten it really is. I admit that. But it makes a hell of a lot more sense than this film and is frankly more entertaining to boot, which should give you an indication as to how rotten it really is.
At the beginning of the movie, the hunky CIA agent Bill Pope (Ryan Reynolds), who is based in London, has just hidden away Dutch hacker Jan “The Dutchman” Stroop (Michael Pitt), as part of an agreement to get him $10 million and a new identity, in exchange for a wormhole program that could cause unimaginable death and destruction in the wrong hands. The Pope is taken by surprise by the henchmen of Hagbardaka Heimbahl (Jordi Molla), a deranged former Spanish businessman turned anarchist who has already pledged to bring about a bloody revolution throughout the world. Even though Pope has been killed, Quaker Wells, the bureau chief (played by Gary Oldman), is confident that this obstacle can be overcome. After maintaining the artificial firing of his neurons, Wells consults with Dr. Franks (Tommy Lee Jones), a brilliant neurosurgeon who, fortunately, has been working on a procedure to transfer memories from one brain to another. Wells hopes that Dr. Franks will be able to help him. Jericho Stewart (Kevin Costner), an imprisoned sociopath whose childhood injury to the frontal lobes rendered him incapable of feeling any kind of emotion or empathy but happily left him the perfect lab rat for the experiment, is the only person that Dr. Franks is willing to perform the procedure on. As it turns out, the only person that Dr. Franks is willing to perform the procedure on is Jericho Stewart.
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Just ten seconds after waking up from the experimental brain surgery, when Jericho fails to recall the crucial information about the whereabouts of The Dutchman—who by this point is making moves to sell his program to the Russians—Wells orders him to be killed. Jericho’s failure to recall the information is the reason The Dutchman is making moves to sell his program to the Russians. But after he pulls off a daring escape and makes it back to London, he starts displaying strange flashes of Pope’s abilities and memories. These range from the typical spy stuff to the fact that he is able to speak French to the time that he rented “Double Jeopardy.” When he breaks into the Pope house and seems prepared to do horrible things to his widow (Gal Gadot) and their adorable daughter (Lara Decaro), he only robs them instead of murdering them in their beds because the operation appears to be allowing him to feel emotions for the first time. This is a significant development. After being told by Dr. Franks that he will only be able to access Pope’s memories and feelings for the next few days or so (unfortunately, Dr. Franks does not get the chance to say “Well Jericho, we always knew this day would come”), Jericho makes the decision to try to find out where The Dutchman is and protect Pope’s wife and kid, all while evading the CIA and Heimbahl’s army of mostly idiotic minions.
At this point, many of you are probably thinking that “Criminal” sounds like the most absurd film concept imaginable — a looney blend of “Flowers for Algernon,” “Seconds,” and any of the various movies involving Ryan Reynolds and experimental procedures that allow him to once again contact a significant other while hordes of trained killers try to wipe him out. “Criminal” stars Ryan Reynolds as a man who undergoes a series of procedures that allow The movie is ridiculous, but personally, I have no problem with goofball action extravaganzas as long as they are presented with the appropriate amount of style and wit. The film does not meet either of those requirements. Consider the body of work produced by Luc Besson, for instance. The premise of movies such as “Nikita,” “Leon,” and “Lucy” is completely ridiculous, but the director revels in this ridiculousness, presenting it in such a gleefully nutty manner while at the same time deploying his astonishing skill for staging action set pieces that you can’t help but be entertained by them; they may be eye candy, but they are most certainly of the gourmet variety.
Criminal Quiz
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The director of “Criminal,” Ariel Vromen, whose previous works include the independent efforts “Danika” and “The Iceman,” never manages to find the right handle for the material, despite the fact that “Criminal” borrows any number of pages from the Besson playbook, ranging from the European locales to the main actors to the dialogue that occasionally sounds like it went through the Babelfish translator one time too many. This is true despite the fact that the dialogue occasionally sounds like His staging of the action beats, despite being bloodier than one might have anticipated, is, at best, perfunctory and only occasionally reaches those heights. The dramatic moments also fall flat in large part due to the fact that we are never invested in Jericho’s evolution or his reconciliation with his family at any point in the story. If you can explain why Heimbahl wants to destroy the world or why The Dutchman is suddenly eager to sell to the Russians and offer a potentially disastrous demonstration of his abilities to boot, you are one up on me, or you have had the memories of Cook and/or Weisberg jammed in your skulls. He also fails to make any lucid sense of the screenplay that was written by Douglas Cook and David Weisberg.
Even though “Criminal” has one of the most impressive casts for a movie that could have easily been released on video on demand instead of in theaters, the movie still fails to impress. Despite the fact that he is generally perceived as a nice guy, Costner has done an outstanding job in the past playing psychopaths in movies like “A Perfect World” and the criminally underrated “Mr. Brooks,” but this ranks as one of his worst performances to date. Instead of developing a believable character, he spends the entirety of the movie grunting and speaking in a manner that is reminiscent of a less than stellar Nick Nolte impression. Oldman and Jones, for their parts, respond to their characters in the same manner that they typically do. The former chews as much of the scenery as he can without causing massive structural damage, whereas the latter is so stiff and undemonstrative that it appears as though he is performing each and every scene while being forced to do so. Gal Gadot is striking enough in her role as Bill’s wife, but she has even less to do in this boondoggle than she did in that other superhero movie called “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.” Ryan Reynolds is only in it for a few minutes, and during that time, he spends part of that time being tortured at length with an electric cattle prod. This is contrary to what the advertisements suggest will happen.
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And yet, given the presence of well-known actors and a large number of loud explosions, I can almost guarantee that there are some individuals who believe that I am being unduly picky about what amounts to nothing more than a “popcorn film,” a term that I abhor because it connotes a movie that serves no purpose other than to provide mindless entertainment. How am I supposed to persuade them that they would be better off picking something like “Everybody Wants Some!!,” “Midnight Special,” or “Green Room” instead? When I was looking through the trivia for the movie “Criminal,” I came across a fact that was both straightforward and astounding: “Nicolas Cage declined a lead role.” The fact that Nicolas Cage, who has a strangely indiscriminate taste in film, was perfectly willing to sign on to do this film despite the fact that it was somehow beneath him should pretty much say everything there is to say about the situation.
For more personality quizzes check this: The Infiltrator Quiz.
