Criminal

Starring: Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, Ryan Reynolds, Jordi Molla, Gal Gadot, Michael Pitt, Alice Eve
Directed by: Ariel Vromen
Rating: R
Genre: Action, Drama
2016

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A dangerous criminal (Kevin Costner) has a dead CIA Agent's (Ryan Reynolds) memories implanted into his head.

Review:

Tim: Criminal is a generic action drama that is helped by a surprisingly strong cast. I really, really enjoyed the cast, but it's odd that they would choose a movie like this. Everything about this movie (besides the cast) just feels second rate. A criminal has a CIA agent's memories implanted. Okay, that's not exactly new. The movie just rolls out, never trying to be especially memorable. This isn't a bad movie, it's just an unfortunately forgettable one.

Let's talk about the cast, because it really elevates this film from "bad" to "decent" territory. I know Kevin Costner gets a bad rap, but I like the guy. He's a solid actor and is fun to watch here. He does enough little things well that I find myself drawn to his characters. He doesn't have the most well-rounded character here, but he's not bad with what he has to work with. Gary Oldman was saddled with a horribly generic role, but I would watch him in anything. He's able to break out of the limitations of his character only once or twice, but he still makes this movie better. Tommy Lee Jones had one of the better roles in the film and he was able to shine in a few scenes. I really enjoyed him here. Ryan Reynolds felt like an odd choice and has far too little to do to justify his presence here. He was a bit of a head-scratcher. He feels like too big of a star for such a little (albeit important) role. Gal Gadot was fine, Alice Eve has nothing much to do. This movie would have been a lot better had the cast been fully leveraged. However, even a partially leveraged cast of this level of talent makes this movie worth seeing.

The story is okay- it's never outright boring, but it doesn't really engage you either. It felt completely redundant to dozens of other movies. It never stands out or sticks in your mind. The most memorable part of the movie is actually a negative- the weird, uncomfortable scenes of Costner and Gadot in their home. Those scenes came across as tone deaf and awkward. They didn't make any sense (no sane mother would act the way Gadot does) and weren't much fun to watch. They challenged the credulity of the whole thing and sunk the movie a bit in the middle. Once you move past those scenes, the film becomes tolerable again. The director and writer just made some questionable choices with those sequences.

I certainly didn't hate Criminal, but I really didn't like it all that much, either. It's not a hard movie to watch, but is probably 9-10 minutes too long. I was mildly interested throughout the film, but I was never truly engaged. It was fun to see the talented cast but maddening that they weren't given more to do and were saddled with substandard characters. The movie is middle-of-the-road enough for me to consider it decent, but it's hard to feel too pleased with the end result here.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: The Bourne Identity, Inception, Mr. and Mrs. Smith