Review of Criminal (2016) by Jonty B — 19 Apr 2016

Despite the ridiculous premise, Costner's latest film worked well and redeemed him some of creditability he lost in 3 days to kill as an action film lead (don't ever watch 3 days to kill, it's terrible).

I thought with the amount of decent actors in this film, it can't be awful (not exactly a golden rule though!). Fortunately I was right, it wasn't awful, in fact it wasn't that bad at all. It easily kept me entertained for it's 1hr 53min run time and some parts of it were in fact quite gripping.

The story follows Costner's character 'Jericho' running amok around London after he has had Ryan Renold's memories implanted into his brain. Sounds ridiculous because it is, but then again so is Spiderman so no point picking that bit of film apart. Jericho is not a great candidate for the implant as he is in general, a terrible human being, but they have to use him for reasons explained in the film. Once the memories are in him, it's pretty much the standard, several groups after him and he has to fight his way through them type flic.

What in my opinion makes it a good film is the action and acting. The action sequences are well done, have great sound (I really hate poor sound editing in action films) and they don't tone down the violence which is also a hate of mine. To Jericho's character violence is as natural as breathing and that is certainly shown in the film.

The acting from all the cast was fairly good, it's one of Costner's more interesting roles as the character was quite cold and unabashed about killing people but despite that you can't help liking him. I've never really rated Costner as a great actor, always thought he was bit wooden, fortunately that works well in this film and was probably written with him in mind. Galcot and Jones were very believable in their roles and although it wasn't Gary Oldman's finest work, it wasn't his worst, 90% of his lines were him shouting so it's hard to mess that up.

The only cons are; a couple of bit that don't fully make sense and despite them being great it had fairly short action sequences.

Overall, I would say it's worth a watch. It's not going to win any awards but that includes a Razzie. If I had to compare it to other films, I'd say it sits somewhere between Safe House, Die Hard and 6th day. Make your own judgement though, don't listen to reviews!