CRIMINAL (Ariel Vromen). 113 minutes. Opens Friday (April 15). See Listing. Rating: NN
If last year’s Self/Less didn’t fulfill your quota of Ryan Reynolds brain-switching movies, consider Criminal, a goofy thriller about a sociopath (Kevin Costner) implanted with the memories of a murdered CIA agent (Reynolds) in a desperate attempt to find a Dutch hacker (Michael Pitt) who’s seized -control of the U.S. military.
Sounds foolproof, right? But the plan misfires, leaving him on the run in London, hunted by both the CIA and a Spanish anarchist (Jordi Mollà) and haunted by memories of the dead man’s family.
Shot on the cheap with an all-star cast that includes Costner’s JFK comrades Gary Oldman and Tommy Lee Jones and newly minted Wonder Woman Gal Gadot, it’s basically a reverse Face/Off, but the parts don’t fit together as well as they should.
The first and third acts are efficient extended chases, but there’s an hour in the middle that’s just Costner wandering around London grimacing and bleeding from various wounds. Or at least it felt that way.
