Criminal is a 2016 American action thriller film directed by Ariel Vromen and written by Douglas Cook and David Weisberg. The film is about a convict who is implanted with a dead CIA agent’s memories to finish an assignment. The film stars Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, and Tommy Lee Jones, in the second collaboration among all three following the 1991 film JFK. The film also features Alice Eve, Gal Gadot, Michael Pitt, Jordi Mollà, Antje Traue, Scott Adkins, Amaury Nolasco, and Ryan Reynolds.
Principal photography began on September 4, 2014, in London. The film was produced by Campbell-Grobman Films and Millennium Films and was released on April 15, 2016 and received negative reviews from critics and was a box office failure, grossing only $38.8 million against its $31.5 million budget.
Plot
Spanish industrialist-turned-anarchist Xavier Heimdahl arranges for his associate Jan Strook—a hacker known as “the Dutchman”—to create a wormhole program that would allow the owner to bypass all computer codes protecting the world’s nuclear defense codes. The Dutchman panics and attempts to hand his secret over to CIA agent Bill Pope. Although Pope gets the Dutchman to a safe house and recovers the money to pay him for his services, he is caught by Heimdahl’s men and tortured to death before he can tell anyone where he hid the Dutchman.
Desperate to find the Dutchman, Pope’s supervisor Quaker Wells contacts Dr. Micah Franks, who has developed a treatment that could theoretically plant the memory patterns of a dead person onto a living one. Franks requests that they “graft” Pope’s knowledge into the brain of convict Jerico Stewart, who received damage in his frontal lobe by being abused as a child and is effectively a sociopath.
After the operation, Jerico escapes custody and fakes his death. He goes to Pope’s house, where he holds Pope’s widow Jillian hostage while he looks for the money. As time goes on, he experiences memory flashes of Pope’s past, but all he can determine is that the bag of money was hidden behind a bookshelf, without identifying where it or the Dutchman are kept.
The CIA learns that the Dutchman is planning to sell the program to the Russians, believing that the CIA has betrayed him. Fortunately, they are able to find Jerico after he contacts Dr. Franks for medication using Pope’s CIA codes. Jerico is beginning to develop emotions and draw on Pope’s experience. As Jerico attempts to retrace the route Pope took to hide the Dutchman, Heimdahl creates a distraction at the airport that draws Wells’ attention, allowing Heimdahl’s accomplice and lover Elsa to try and capture Jerico, killing his CIA guards before Jerico escapes by driving off a bridge.
Jerico retreats to the Pope house, where he encounters Jillian and explains the situation to her. Although she initially fears him, Jillian comes to accept Jerico as she sees him bonding with her daughter, Emma, allowing Jerico to stay the night. The next morning, Jerico realizes through a conversation with Jillian that the bag is hidden in the rare books collection at the University of London where she works. He attempts to retrieve the bag, but he is captured by Heimdahl and Elsa once he has found it. Heimdahl threatens to kill Jillian and Emma unless Jerico takes him to the Dutchman.
With the CIA and a Russian strike team now seeking the Dutchman, Jerico—who has recalled that Pope hid the Dutchman in Jillian’s office at the university—is able to escape Elsa using an improvised nitro-glycerine bomb, returning to the office to provide a hurried explanation to the Dutchman. Elsa finds them before they can escape, shooting Jerico in the shoulder and killing the Dutchman, but Jerico gets the upper hand and bludgeons her to death with a lamp.
Jerico takes the flash drive containing the wormhole program to the airfield where Heimdahl is attempting an escape. Jerico saves Jillian and Emma, even as Heimdahl shoots him. As Heimdahl’s plane takes off, Jerico reveals to Wells that he had the Dutchman reprogram the wormhole so that it would target the source of the next transmission. This results in Heimdahl unwittingly destroying his own plane when he tries to fire a missile at the airfield.
A few months later, Jerico is shown on the beach where Pope and Jillian had their honeymoon. He is initially unresponsive to anything but automatic reflexes and responses. With all other options exhausted, Wells and Franks take Jillian and Emma to see him. The sight of Pope’s family confirms that some part of Pope exists in Jerico as he responds with a nose-tap. This was Pope and Jillian’s way of saying “I love you”. Witnessing this, Quaker reflects that he will offer Jerico a job.
Cast
Kevin Costner as Jerico Stewart
Ryan Reynolds as Bill Pope
Gal Gadot as Jillian “Jill” Pope
Gary Oldman as Quaker Wells
Tommy Lee Jones as Dr. Micah Franks
Alice Eve as Marta Lynch
Michael Pitt as Jan Strook or the Dutchman
Jordi Mollà as Xavier Heimdahl
Antje Traue as Elsa Mueller
Scott Adkins as Pete Greensleeves
Amaury Nolasco as Esteban Ruiza
Colin Salmon as Warden
Robert Davi as Admiral Lance (uncredited)
Richard Reid as James Osborne
Natalie Burn as Shoo Shoo
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