Criminal (2024)

Criminal

Hollywood likes to mess with minds, and in “Criminal,” Kevin Costner is the lucky recipient of some brain muck. A convict gets neurologically altered for national security reasons in this movie directed by Ariel Vromen, a serviceable action flick that moves quickly. Mr. Costner has fun as Jerico Stewart, a career criminal so dangerous and unpredictable that he can’t just be locked up he also needs to be chained down. An injury when he was young left him with frontal lobe syndrome; “He feels nothing: no hatred, no love,” we’re told.

This makes him an ideal candidate for a radical procedure ordered by the C.I.A. after one of its operatives, Bill Pope (Ryan Reynolds), is killed with valuable information trapped in his brain. Tommy Lee Jones is the surgeon who transplants Bill’s memories into Jerico. Security is less than airtight when it comes to a patient like Jerico, who then escapes into London while gradually piecing together his predicament as bits of Bill’s memories surface. Bill was working on a case involving a master hacker who had penetrated the American military’s security systems; now Jerico is being chased by both the C.I.A. and the bad guys who want to hack their way to world domination.

If you have an experimental neurosurgery at the center of your plot, you can afford some inconsistency flash drives seem to make sense to Jerico, though not childproof caps; only some of Bill’s memories and skills seem to have transferred over. But don’t think too hard about this ridiculous story; just follow it through its even more ridiculous resolution, enjoying Mr. Costner and a reliable supporting cast (Gary Oldman as the C.I.A.’s top man; Gal Gadot as Bill’s wife) along the way.

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