If you get past the murky science being presented in Criminal, there’s an enjoyable action ride here even if it’s still too rough to be an instant classic.
Kevin Costner plays Jericho Stewart, a man lacking activity in the frontal lobes, meaning he doesn’t understand why actions are bad or good, he usually just does what he wants. When the CIA loses agent Bill Pope (Ryan Reynolds) in the field, they still attempt to recover his memories with the help of Dr. Franks (Tommy Lee Jones) and then the movie is really off to the races. Imagine the pieces I just told you smashed together with the computer hysterics of Die Hard 4. That’s about what you get with Criminal and while the main character is certainly interesting to watch, there’s really nothing else to grab you into this film.
Jericho’s condition is a solid parallel for this film tackled storytelling; it does whatever it wants to. Underneath the odd directing choices and juxtaposition of science and comedic moments, there is a fun ride as we watch Costner begin to discover his conscience for the first time. For a film released between Jan to April, he is certainly one of the most memorable. It’s just a shame that the film wasn’t grounded enough to make us believe everything going on. With that much scientific breakthrough going on in the first 20 minutes, the film need to avoid jumping the shark everywhere else. Like the Die Hard reference above, this film would have us believe the US military has an automated missile computer system, memories can be switched from person to person, hacking solves everything, and literally minutes after a brain surgery, you can get and start running around. If they grounded it a bit more and helped ease us in, we probably could have accepted quite a bit of it. As it stand, there’s too much mumbo jumbo thrown at us when we haven’t even warmed up the key players yet.
Jericho gets great moments with Pope’s widow, Jill (Gal Gadot), even though the initial encounters are definitely awkward for them and the audience. While it led to some great humor and insight later, the way we get there is disappointing. Jericho would also have missed opportunities with the rest of the cast. These could have served to fill in those characters better while giving us more depth into Bill Pope. Sadly, this resulted in more than just a few throw away lines and left a lot of potential growth dangling there. Costner has to do most of the work because his supporting cast never gels enough to be interesting.
Honestly, Costner playing Jericho is the only reason I could in good conscience recommend seeing this. The plot is too murky to get a great grasp of, but seeing an older Costner beating up whomever he wants and running amuck is pretty enjoyable. Well…enjoyable if you can cut your brain off for two hours.
Criminal: 4 out of 10
Like this post? Check out some of our other posts below!
About Author
