Life extension is all the rage, in medical laboratories, but in science-fiction scripts, the term has taken on a new definition. Preserving somebody’s essence, postmortem, in another body or network as a way to negate mortality is a hot plot point in our movies.
In 2014’s silly Transcendence, Johnny Depp’s consciousness lived long — and really, really prospered — in a computer. In this year’s sillier Criminal, it’s the late Ryan Reynolds’ memories grafted onto the vacant frontal lobe of Kevin Costner. Can’t Hollywood just let people die anymore? In this case, it surely would have spared us the nearly two hours of Criminal, a film as generic as its title and as brainless (sorry) as Costner’s underdeveloped brute.
Reynolds, as London CIA agent Bill Pope, is about to crack a huge case involving an inevitable duffel full of money, a hacker known as “the Dutchman” (Michael Pitt) and a dyspeptic “Spanish anarchist”— we know that’s what he is, because that’s how a subtitle introduces his character, like it’s a profession on his business card — straight out of 1980s Central Casting (Jordi Molia).
When Pope promptly meets his end at the Spanish anarchist’s warehouse o’ torture, London CIA director Quaker Wells (Gary Oldman, forever unsure if he’s supposed to be an American or a Brit) doesn’t, you know, put another agent on the case and fill him in on the particulars. No, instead he enlists a scientist whose life’s work involves transplanting memories from one mammal to another. This is Dr. Franks, played by an exhausted Tommy Lee Jones, those signature bags under his eyes seeming to droop down further with every pitiful line he’s forced to utter.
Quaker, who possesses the patience of a toddler and the temper of a poked bear, pushes forth a procedure whose human trials are “at least five years away.” And he does it with the only subject with the limited cranial capacity to apply for the job: a psychopath, prison lifer, and Unabomber doppelganger named Jericho Stewart (Costner), introduced in a dark prison cell where he’s kept on a tighter leash than Hannibal Lecter and whose removal from his cell requires multiple tranquilizer darts, shot through the bars of his cage. What could go wrong?
Stifle your laughter, or better yet, don’t. Criminal almost works as a black comedy, the kind where throats are slit with makeshift hooks, electrified tongs are inserted into mouths, and office cacti become deadly weapons. When a post-op Jericho, who escapes his CIA handlers, runs roughshod across London without a moral compass or social cues and with the occasional spasmodic memories of an intellectual CIA family man, Criminal nearly drops its grim gravitas and has a little fun with its premise.
Jericho’s traditional mode of communication — caveman grunting and poorly structured monosyllabic sentences — suddenly clashes with the occasional mannered reply, contrite apology. At one point, he breaks into flawless French.
When he enters Bill Pope’s home (he remembers the address), the dead agent’s wife (Gal Gadot) can’t do anything about it, because Jericho knows all the security codes. He’s a Frankenstein monster with an intermittent Ivy League education. When, in a climactic moment, he advises a young medical student to leave the room before he incinerates a chemistry lab, it shows us that — gasp! — the psycho has morals! He’ll be writing sonnets soon.
Treat it as camp over a couple of drinks, and Criminal isn’t so execrable. But taken at face value, this is a vacuous thriller filled with stupid-smart tech jargon (“The Dutchman dug a wormhole in the deep Web!”) and whose science — explained in all of one minute of screen time — is laughably ludicrous, making one yearn for the cerebral surgical mechanics of Face/Off. And it’s an accepted rule that whenever John Woo’s trading-places actioner is spoken of reverentially, you know the bottom of your film’s barrel has been reached, with no ladders in sight.
CRIMINAL. Director: Ariel Vroman; Cast: Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Gal Gadot, Tommy Lee Jones, Alice Eve, Ryan Reynolds, Michael Pitt, Jordi Molia, Scott Adkins; Distributor: Summit; Rating: R; Opens: Friday at most area theaters