by Monica Hayes
After three decades of wearing the white hat, Kevin Costner takes a walk on the wild side in the star-studded action thriller, Criminal.
The C.I.A. needs to know the location of a hacker named The Dutchman who wants asylum to the U.S. in exchange for a worm program he created that can control the entire United States’ security codes, firewalls, the ability to override any command and nuclear weapons. Bill Pope (Ryan Reynolds) the only person, who knows the location of the Dutchman, is tasked to bring him in, but that doesn’t happen. Pope is chased around London and eventually killed by henchmen working for anarchist Heimdahl (Jordi Mollà).
Now under time constraints, the C.I.A. desperately needs the information in Pope’s head in order to find The Dutchman, so they contact Dr. Franks (Tommy Lee Jones) who has the ability to copy memories from one and implant to another. Enter Jericho Stewart (Costner), a convicted killer who has no compassion, no emotions, and no sense of right or wrong, good or bad, love or hate. It’s what he wants when he wants it and by any means necessary to get it, even if that means beating a man with a cooler full of sodas, or breaking a nose to achieve his goal. Pope’s memories, skills, and abilities are implanted into Jericho’s brain and the movie takes off from there.
After waking up and having Quaker (Gary Oldman) basically badger him to give up the location of the Dutchman, Jericho shuts him down. He escapes and eventually wanders through London to places he has never been, beating up folks, speaking different languages, etc., all the while having painful memory surges of Pope’s life and feelings interfere with his agenda to wreak havoc.
Criminal is the flip side of the 1997 movie Face-Off except instead of exchanging faces, its implanting memories from a corpse to living tissue.
Costner came out of his box to play this role. In his normal roles, he would have played the CIA director, however, this time, he IS the bad guy. While watching, it almost seemed like he had more fun playing this character who grunts, yells, screams, and being an all around ass. The story easy to follow, there are bad guys, shooting, cars blowing up, cars crashing in water, you know the normal.
I actually liked Criminal and while it is not The Bodyguard or Untouchables, I’d have to say it is one of Costner’s better movies.
Grade: B-