During the past weekend and this super long weekend in Indonesia, there are not a lot of options for movie enthusiast like me. Between Captain America: Civil War and AADC2 which are occupying most of the theaters in the 3 major cineplexes, there was a new Hollywood movie released on Wednesday titled Criminal.
It is surprising to see such a large ensemble cast in a movie which did not have a lot of hypes when it was shown in Indonesia. Even to watch this movie, it takes a bit of an effort since there were only like 11 cinemas showing it in Jakarta. Ok, so let's move on to the movie itself.
Brief Story Line (warning some spoilers, so you can skip this part if you are not interested)
Movie is about a CIA agent named Bill Pope (played by Ryan Reynolds - Deadpool etc) who took a bag full of money and passport from some place. He then called his wife Jill (played by Gal Gadot - FF5 & 6 and as Wonder Woman in DC movies) and his daughter Emma before noticing he was being chased by a group of bad people.
In the CIA headquarter in London, their leader Quaker (played by Gary Oldman - The Dark Knight trilogy etc) was worried about the safety of Bill so he sent a team to assist Bill. However, the main villain Heimbahl - an anarchist who did not trust governments was able to intercept and caught Bill. He wanted to find out where Jan Stroop aka Dutchman, a hacker who managed to have the wormhole to the weapon/missile system was hiding. If the codes should fall into the wrong hands, this would potentially create chaos and war.
When Quaker's team finally able to track down Bill's whereabouts, they were too late and he was found dead at the scene. Later CIA looked for the help of Dr. Franks (played by the veteran Tommy Lee Jones) to retract Bill's memory from his brain and put into someone else which was basically what Dr. Franks 18 years research all about. Though this was never experimented on actual human beings, but it appeared to be the only option then to find out Dutchman's location. However, the trick was to find the person able to receive Bill's memories. It should be a person whose frontal lobe brain not properly developed. The best available candidate was a psychopath who did not have emotion and could not differentiate between right and wrong, a criminal named Jericho Stewart (played by Kevin Costner - The Bodyguard, Dances with Wolves, Robin Hood etc).
At first when the operation was done, it appeared unsuccessful and Quaker was very upset. So he instructed Jericho to be returned to prison. But apparently it was successful as Jericho started to have some of Bill's memories and feelings coming to him piece by piece. Unfortunately one of the thing he remembered was the bag full of money which for him was very interesting. Hence, start his mission to look for the money by looking from various places, starting from Bill's home where Jill & Emma still staying.
This act was found out by Quaker's team and they realized he started to have Bill's memory. And Heimbahl also managed to learnt about this info. Hunted by Quaker & his CIA team and also Heimbahl's assassins, Jericho tried all his best to avoid them while looking for the money. This was also made complicated with the feelings he started to have from Bill's memory, especially for Jill and Emma.
So can Jericho outrun all of them? Can he get the money he wanted so bad? What will happen to him and will he be having Bill's memory permanently or will he lose it? Find them all in the movie.
End of Brief Story Line
To all of you looking for something different than the 2 biggest movies playing in theater now, I believe this can be an option. It is not a spectacular action movie. It is not a pure science fiction either (even though transferring brain memory to another would classify as that). I think this one is more like a thriller, with some actions but not special effects kind/cgi kind.
Of course there were certain parts where I felt a bit unrealistic (the ending part) from my opinion. But hey, this was not supposed to be that kind of movie. So just sit back and enjoy the show. Btw, if you are a big fan of Kevin Costner, this would feel a little bit different from his other films, coz he has to be a psychopath in this movie, so his actions were sadistic, but somehow it made him likeable to us audiences as well.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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