Criminal ** (2016, Kevin Costner, Gal Gadot, Gary Oldman, Alice Eve, Tommy Lee Jones, Ryan Reynolds, Michael Pitt) – Movie Review

Criminal may be fun, even a guilty pleasure, but it is a pretty bad sci-fi action thriller, with a ridiculous premise that’s impossible to swallow about the memories and skills of a dead CIA agent being implanted into an dangerous convict to take over his mission.

Plus, there are some fairly terrible performances by esteemed Gary Oldman, Alice Eve (both Brits saddled with idiot ‘American’ accents), Michael Pitt (saddled with an idiot ‘Dutch’ accent as a mad hacker), Tommy Lee Jones etc, all admittedly in awesomely poorly sketched roles that would defy anyone. Spain’s Jordi Mollà isn’t much to write home about as the smooth, torturing arch-villain Hagbardaka Heimbahl either.

Nevertheless, main star Kevin Costner, getting better and better as the years go by, is on top form as Jericho Stewart, the unpredictable, but predictably violent convict who wakes up with the CIA agent’s memories and a mission to find and kill the Dutch hacker before he launches intercontinental ballistic missiles and starts World War III. It says a lot that Costner gets you to go along with this.

Also on the credit side, the film moves along at a breathless pace, with non-stop action and lots of daft lines to chuckle over (‘Who punches someone in a patisserie, you animal!’), so there’s no time to think how bad it all is. And it is an impressive production, with lots of great London and UK gritty locations and slick shooting and visual effects. And it’s got Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) in it too, playing CIA agent Ryan Reynolds’s girlfriend.

It seems like you’re going to get a low-budget Brit indie movie but, no, you can see that money has been lavished on it – $31,500,000 apparently. But what a waste of them it all is! If only it had a better, loads better script. On the other hand, without Costner, the locations and the ultra-slick production, it would be nothing. So, I guess that’s $31,500,000 reasonably well spent then, though I could think of better uses for the money.

The Israeli director is Ariel Vromen, whose last film is The Iceman in 2012. The writers are Douglas Cook and David Weisberg (The Rock, Double Jeopardy).

The bottom line is, can you forgive a movie that transfers a hot young actor’s brain into that of Kevin Costner? Against all odds, Costner makes it much easier than you’d ever expect.

Costner filmed around Croydon College, Kingston, Surrey Keys and Shoreditch. He said about Croydon: ‘People kind of gave it a weird rep and I thought “No, we’re going to Croydon. I kind of like the name!”‘

‘On paper I had to ask them “What movie did you see that made you think I could do this?” But then there was a time when I thought “I think I can do this. I think I can do this in a way I don’t think people will expect.”

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/