Criminal (2016)
Directed by Ariel Vromen
CIA Agent Bill Pope is on a mission to track down a shadowy hacker named 'The Dutchman'. When he gets mysteriously killed, an experimental procedure transfers his memories into a dangerous ex-convict. When he wakes up Pope's memories, his mission is to eliminate The Dutchman before the hacker launches ICBMs and starts World War III.
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What critics compared Criminal to
It reminded me of John Woo’s Face/Off (1996) in the way it drops without much comment a loony science-fiction concept into otherwise routine action thriller material and asks the audience to just roll with it.
There’s a hardcore action subplot buried somewhere – akin to, say, Face/Off – but seesawing tonalities try to legitimize a laundry list of wholly unbelievable genre-focused stupidity.
Director Ariel Vromen adopts a Euro-grit, Bourne-like aesthetic that is slightly at odds with the Face/Off-style high concept, but in amid the rollicking violence and obvious softer scenes - where Jericho develops "feelings" for Mrs Pope (Wonder Woman Gal Gadot) - there's a good dose of wink-wink humour.
The premise may cause you to think off Face/Off but this is no John Woo movie.
The high-concept is interesting (it has some similarities to the 1997 action blockbuster Face/Off) but it’s built on so many clumsy plot choices that it’s hard to understand why these characters make the silly decisions that they do.
This is a scenario to have fun with — and that’s been true across all genres, from untold adaptations of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to the Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin classic All of Me to John Woo’s wickedly silly Face/Off .
Written by Douglas Cook and David Weisberg and directed by Ariel Vromen (“The Iceman”), “Criminal” is an action thriller that borrows a science fiction concept that has been used and overused time and time again: “Total Recall,” “Inception,” “Dark City,” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” are a few examples.