Criminal

Having a career in Hollywood can be very rough, especially if you have been in the movie industry for many years. You have to be able to take on all kinds of characters, and movie genres, even if you may loose cinema visitors. It is all about taking chances sometimes, and we have many great actors who have proved themselves. One of these actors i am thinking about right now, is Kevin Costner. A man who is known for many great performances in the past, especially in The Untouchables, Dancing With Wolves and JFK. I happen to enjoy his classic 90´s film Waterworld, even though i know a lot of critics always hated this film. If you look at it for what it is, i see a film that tried to mix different genres in a positive way. He have tried a lot of different film genres, and seems to be open to try anything that looks interesting. There is one film that many people don´t talk about, a film that was better then i expected. I don´t know if some of you remember a film from 2007 called Mr. Brooks ? Kevin Costner played a serial killer, and he actually did a pretty good job as a psychopathic killer. The film did not do well enough to get a sequel, when there were rumors of doing a trilogy. But i recommend you rent this film, if you want to see Kevin do a very different character. There are other films i could recommend that some of you may not have seen, like the horror film The New Daughter. Not one of the better films in Costner´s career, but nice to see him do something unexpected. One of the performances i did enjoy, where he surprised me, was in Man Of Steel, as Clark Kent´s father. I think he was the right choice, and he proved himself doing a dramatic role. In recent years Kevin keeps on working a lot, and releasing new films. To be honest, i have not seen many of these releases. I got a chance to see one of them, called Criminal. I only read a little bit about the film, and read some of the reviews. Since i always try to see a film with an open mind, and not be affected of other critics, i decided to gove Criminal a chance. Is this a surprisingly good film with Kevin Costner, or is his glory days long gone into another galaxy ?

Industrialist Xavier Heimdahl ( Jordi Mollá ) arrange for his associate Jan Strook ( Michael Pitt ), a computer hacker known as " The Dutchman ", to create a wormhole program. This program will make it possible for the owner, to bypass all computer codes protecting the world´s nuclear defence codes. " The Dutchman " panics and attend to leave over the information to the CIA. He makes contact with London-based agent Bill Pope ( Ryan Reynolds ). Bill manage to help " The Dutchman " to a safe location. But soon Bill is taken hostage and tortured to death, by Xavier Heimdahl´s men. Xavier does not get any information on where " The Dutchman " is located, so Pop´s CIA supervisor Quaker Wells ( Gary Oldman ) contacts Dr. Micah Franks ( Tommy Lee Jones ). Dr. Micah have developed a treatment that could theoretically plant the memory pattern of a dean man, into a living person. This way they might have a chance to locate " The Dutchman ". Frank request that dangerous convict Jericho Stewart will be the subject of the procedure. But the procedure eventually fails, and Jericho escape. As he goes on a rampage on the streets of London, Jericho have flashback memories, but do they have a connection with " The Dutchman ", or do they lead Jericho somewhere else ?

When you have a cast list of Kevin Costner, Ryan Reynolds, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones and Jordi Mólla, you would expect a really good film included. This is where we find ourselves a big problem. Criminal is not a very effective action thriller, mainly because it is way too predictable. And Kevin Costner does one of the most strangest performances in his career. Really ? Yes, he clearly did this film for a paycheck, not because of the content. So what about the rest of the cast ? Gary Oldman, who usually do really good performances, does not deliver on the quality level of acting, we are used to see. This is such a shame, because he may be one of the best actors in this film, and he does at least do some acting. But it is not very strong, so if he really wanted to make us interested, he should have turned up the level much higher. Tommy Lee Jones is usually good in his choices of characters, here he feels pretty tired, and does not look very interested. Ryan Reynolds is a great actor, when he gets the right character. Not even he can save this film, from being pretty dull. One of the biggest problems i have with Criminal, is that the story is not very interesting. As many of you know, a thriller is supposed to feel intensive, or suspenseful. It all lands somewhere between an ordinary mainstream action thriller, and a typical dvd release that no one remembers. This is starting to sound like i don´t see anything positive with this film at all. There are a few good details. The London scenes look good, and some of the scenes where Kevin Costner use action, and don´t talk, is more effective. He should have skipped the dialogue, and just be violent all the time. Director Ariel Vromen directed the good thriller The Iceman in 2012, with a very good performance from Michael Shannon. Seeing his vision of Criminal, and comparing it to The Iceman, it feels like he have turned pages in the wrong direction. His latest film is not as good as it should be, with such a great cast. If you want to hear Kevin Costner speak drunk, and punch people, this is the film to see. Criminal is not completely awful, but way too boring to make you interested.

Rating: DD