Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.0

Criminal Blu-ray Movie Review

Yep.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 26, 2016

Criminal is one of those so-called “high concept” films, by which I mean someone was obviously high when they conceived it (it seems like it actually took two high folks, co-screenwriters Douglas Cook and David Weisberg, to come up with the idea). Equal parts Source Code and the long ago and mostly forgotten Project X, along with a smattering of other science fiction-y referents (including what amounts to a tip of the hat to the swelling IQ of Charly ), Criminal deals with the sort of “mind swapping” that informs more whimsical films like Freaky Friday, though in this case the laughs are mostly unintentional. A nefarious con named Jericho Stewart (Kevin Costner) gets “implanted” with the memories of a deceased CIA operative whose mind holds the secret that will (hopefully) prevent an imminent nuclear holocaust. Already some armchair scientists may be wondering about this concept, since it hinges upon technologies which are able to preserve brain matter and then transport relevant “data” to another cranium, but which are unable to simply “extract” that data for review without the need of an intermediary of another actual human getting involved. Criminal repeatedly relies on artifices of this type, and so audience enjoyment will probably be predicated on how much tolerance individual viewers have for setups that are rigidly proscribed and yet almost willfully illogical at times.

An uncredited Ryan Reynolds is front and center in Criminal’s early going (after a prelude which featuring Jericho which is obviously going to be part one of a bookending strategy), playing desperate CIA agent Bill Pope. Pope has gotten something valuable and is trying to squirrel it away to someplace safe, though it’s not initially clear what exactly the valuable cargo he’s carrying is. When his best laid plans go seriously awry, he’s left for dead, though of course his brain is just alive enough to become part of a “memory experiment” that’s being shepherded by a doctor named Franks (Tommy Lee Jones, suddenly looking seriously aged).

Interestingly this often by the numbers enterprise doesn’t play games with identifying the bad guys in the film, and one of the chief villains, a kind of ruthless industrialist named Xavier Heimbahl (Jordi Mollà) is clearly shown as a nefariously evil machinator from the get go, intent on world domination (of course) courtesy of some help from a hacker named Jan Stroop (Michael Pitt) whose abilities may grant access to the world's nuclear arsenal. Unfortunately for Heimbahl, Stroop (known by his moniker The Dutchman) has thought better about this escapade, leading to him contacting Pope, who has supposedly secreted the guy away somewhere. Pope's unfortunate intersection with Heimbahl means that Stroop's whereabouts are unknown, leading to the panicked attempt to access Pope's memories via their implantation into Jericho. (Got that?)

This high concept is only aggravated by a number of other weirdly specific and at time picayune elements, including having Jericho suffer a debilitating brain injury, which would seem to make him less than an ideal candidate for this particular enterprise, but which of course only makes him the ideal candidate, in just one of the film’s annoying premises. Costner attempts to invest this role with a modicum of actual human emotion, especially as Jericho learns to ferret through Pope’s more “normal” memories of happy times with loved ones, something that Jericho has obviously never experienced himself. The film keeps tipping right up to patently maudlin interchanges in this regard, but the emotions are largely kept at bay simply because everything is so maddeningly obtuse most of the time.

Criminal is competently staged and contains the requisite number of action set pieces that work up at least intermittent energy, but the overall momentum of the film is repeatedly hobbled by the perhaps understandable efforts to inject some interpersonal drama into the proceedings. A large supporting cast, which includes such stalwarts as Gary Oldman (as a CIA chieftain) and Gal Gadot (as Pope’s widow) offer decent turns, and some of the London locations are fun if somewhat familiar, but this is a film with too much on its mind (whichever body that mind may be in), and not quite enough in its heart.

My colleague Brian Orndorf was evidently even less swayed by Criminal than I was. You can read Brian's assessment here.

Criminal Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Criminal is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. According to the IMDb, this was shot largely with the Arri Alexa (at a 2.8K source resolution), with some augmentation for aerial shots courtesy of Red Epic cameras (at 6K resolution), all of which was then finished at a 2K DI. This is an often commendably sharp and very well detailed presentation, at least when it ventures into natural light and when sequences have not been variously color graded. A lot of the outdoor material, including those aforementioned aerial shots (used to establish various locations, including a lot of urban London settings), pops extremely well, and depth of field is often fantastic (the bookending sequences on the beach are a notable example). Close-ups offer a great views of elements like Costner's gristly beard stubble. Perhaps surprisingly given the science fiction subtext of the film, there aren't that many high tech bells and whistles that adorn the film's production design, but when Jericho experiences flashbacks of Pope's memory, the imagery is often toyed with (see screenshot 5 for one example). Several long sequences are rather dark, including a couple of interior scenes where Jericho visits Pope's home and/or family, and a number of other moments are rather interestingly graded into somewhat unusual greenish or brownish tones, and detail levels are incrementally less impressive as a result.

Criminal Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Criminal's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix starts swirling around the listener from the Summit logo, and offers a glut of great effects throughout the presentation, albeit often in a rather cliché ridden manner. Pope's early struggles to evade captors in the urban grounds of London provide a cacophony of sounds, but every time a bad guy shows up, there's a sudden swooping LFE effect that "announces" the arrival. It's sonically interesting, but dramatically tired. Several set pieces offer tons of immersive activity, with gunshots, combat and explosions offering ample energy. Dialogue is well rendered and smartly prioritized, even in some rather noisy sequences. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range extremely wide on this problem free track.

Criminal Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Criminal Intent (1080p; 40:03). See what they did there? That's unfortunately one of the more creative things about this okay set of two featurettes which ultimately boil down to EPK fare.


• Director's Notes (1080p; 40:04) contains some interesting tidbits about shooting various sequences in what amounts to a quasi- commentary, but which therefore contains a lot of footage from the film.


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 4:20)


• Madsonik's "Drift and Fall Again" Music Video (1080p; 3:54)

Criminal Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

What's criminal about Criminal is how it largely wastes a great cast and an at least passable concept by squandering elements far and wide and never really forcefully hitting any one target. The film has a few exciting moments, almost by default, but nothing ever registers very strongly. Technical merits are first rate for those considering a purchase.