Criminal
Director: Ariel Vromen
Stars: Kevin Costner, Ryan Reynolds, Gal Gadot
Duration: 103 mins
Class: 15
KRS Releasing Ltd

I hope that now Ryan Reynolds has struck box-office gold with Deadpool, he won’t need or want to be involved in body and/or mind-swap movies any more, what with two-star comedy The Change-up in 2011; the two-star Self/Less last year. And now, this; the, um, two-star Criminal, where the CIA downloads his memories into Kevin Costner’s brain. As one does.

Reynolds stars as Bill Pope, a CIA agent tracking a hacker known as The Dutchman (Michael Pitt), one of terrorist Xavier Heimdahl’s (Jordi Molla) insiders, who has access to the US military’s central command. Pope is brutally tortured and killed by Heimdahl and, to retrieve the information obtained before he died, Pope’s memories and skills are implanted into the brain of a convicted dangerous killer Jericho Stewart (Kevin Costner). Yet, Stewart escapes his CIA interrogators, just as Heimdahl himself gets closer to gaining access to the US’s nuclear arsenal, and the CIA find themselves in a bit of bind.

Like the aforementioned Self/Less before it, Criminal’s promising, if outlandish, sci-fi premise gets thrown by the wayside to make way for a pedestrian action thriller. It is bogged down by a plot that is not only a tad hard to follow thanks to its rather nonsensical elements; but the ‘science’ behind it all is explained away in a brief scene of exposition, where we are also told that a psychopathic murderer has been chosen to accommodate Pope’s memories because, conveniently, part of his brain is missing following a childhood accident and he is incapable of human emotion, so he has a blank slate. Or something.

To make matters worse, despite the best efforts of the pretty strong ensemble, the script by Douglas Cook and David Weisberg presents a company of cardboard characters, none of who rise above a stereotype (the psychopath with a shot at redemption, the angry CIA chief, the generic Euro villain, the grieving widow, etc.) making it rather difficult to invest in them one way or another.

A company of cardboard characters, none of who rise above a stereotype

It’s no spoiler to say Reynolds has little screen time, while Costner’s Stewart is too thinly-sketched – and it’s hard to imagine how, as the closest thing the film has to a hero, we are expected to sympathise with him, given he is essentially little more than a ruthless cold-blooded killer, for there is little by way of character transformation as he absorbs Pope’s memories and feelings more and more.

Attempts to add a bit of humanity (and misplaced romance) in his interactions with Pope’s widow Jill fail somewhat. The latter is played with blandness by Gal Gadot, showing little of the charisma and presence she displayed her brief but impressive stint as Wonder Woman in Batman vs Superman.

Tommy Lee Jones tries gamely to add gravitas to the role of the maverick neurosurgeon who carries out the memory implant, but looks woebegone most of the time; while Gary Oldman hams it up somewhat as CIA London chief Quaker Wells.

This could have been more palatable nonsense had the filmmakers not taken the whole thing so seriously – it’s all furrowed brows and scientific jargon and concerns about a cataclysmic event. Yet, at the same time, they’re not interested in the subtleties of it all, focusing on many scenes of interminable action and mindless violence when the plot runs out of steam. It’s a shame, because so much could be mined from a situation where a man is suddenly privy to another man’s thoughts and emotions.

But sadly, Stewart’s reaction to being a guinea pig in this experiment are summed up in one line – “having your man in my head made me feel things” – which did little more than elicit inappropriate giggles. As it is, it is little more than a criminal waste of a good idea and the considerable talents on display.

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