I will say this for Criminal: It contains the most fun Kevin Costner performance in quite some time.
Costner plays Jerico, a criminal who endured a frontal lobe injury in childhood that prevented him from developing things like "emotions" and "empathy" and left him unable to deal with the world as the rest of us do. Lines? Personal space? Property? These things mean nothing to Jerico.
Costner plays Jerico with a kind of maniacal, gleeful gusto. There’s something dearly entertaining about watching America’s Dad snarl and snap his way through the streets of London, eating other peoples’ sandwiches and stealing their vans and cracking their jaws when they talk back. Shaggy haired as the film begins, wild-eyed throughout, and prone to grunting things like "I know what that ‘love’ word’s supposed to mean," he’s one part Sean Connery from The Rock, one part Simple Jack from Tropic Thunder.
Jerico’s in the picture because CIA bigwig Quaker Wells (Gary Oldman) needs to track down a hacker brought in from the cold by Bill Pope (Ryan Reynolds). Only one problem: Pope’s dead, killed by the Spanish anarchist Heimbahl (Jordi Molla). Jerico’s deformed brain—filled with neuro stem cells that can become the memories of others, or some such—is needed so Dr. Franks (Tommy Lee Jones) can import Pope’s memories and find Jan Stroop (Michael Pitt), Pope’s hacker friend.
Time is of the essence, since Stroop has "hacked the dark web" and created a "wormhole" that allows him access to a military program that gives him power over literally every weapon in the U.S. arsenal, somehow. There’s no overriding it, no saving anyone targeted by it: with this remarkable little program, you can kill anyone, anywhere. It slices, it dices, it nukes city centers.
And Heimbahl wants to use it to wipe out the governments in D.C., Moscow, Beijing—pretty much any seat of power. Anarchy will replace order, thus making things better for the 99 percent crushed by banks too big and corporations granted personhood. As we know, the Hobbesian state of nature is nothing if not just and egalitarian for the weak, stupid, and other easily preyed-upon sorts hurt by big business.
It’s up to Jerico to stop Heimbahl. Helpfully, Jerico’s motto is "you hurt me, I hurt you worse." And as the film progresses, Jerico begins to remember just how badly Heimbahl hurt Pope before he died.
Criminal is kind of a mess, alternately dumb and dull. Costner’s manic moments aren’t enough to offset his labored emotional struggle as he grapples with these things we humans call "feelings" and his growing love for Pope’s family. It seems that someone involved with the production understood just how troubled the whole thing was, given that it appears to have sat on the shelf for quite some time: at one point we see Jay Carney on a television set in his role as White House spokesman, a position he hasn’t held for almost two years.
It’s too bad, since there’s a prodigious amount of talent going to waste. Even Costner, Oldman, and Jones can’t save this transparently silly train wreck.