"You hurt me, I hurt you worse."
— Jericho Stewart
Criminal is a 2016 Science Fiction Action Thriller film directed by Ariel Vromen, and written by Douglas Cook and David Weisberg. It stars Kevin Costner, Gal Gadot, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, Ryan Reynolds, Alice Eve, Antje Traue and Jordi Mollà.
Jericho Stewart (Costner) is an imprisoned criminal whose childhood brain trauma left him with an inability to feel emotions or control his impulses. However, he's taken from custody when London-based CIA agent Bill Pope (Reynolds) is killed in action, as the CIA, led by Quaker Wells (Oldman), needs to find a hacker known as "the Dutchman", who created a wormhole program which would allow access to the world's nuclear arsenal and which he hid pre-mortem. Jericho is to be the subject of a CIA experiment to graft Pope's brainwaves onto his own. Only his new memories can save the world from Spanish anarchist Xavier Heimdahl (Mollà), who plans to bring destruction to the world.
This film contains examples of:
- Ambiguously Evil: The Spanish government is pursuing Heimdahl because he exposed their corruption, but they are seemingly not working with the CIA, and there is virtually no Spanish presence in the film other than Heimdahl himself. This might imply that they are really ineffectual as well as corrupt, but it could also be that they know or expect that Heimdahl will not choose a less influential country like Spain as a target for his nuclear terrorism(maybe wrongfully or maybe not, as he isn't mentioned to have committed any big scale terrorism in his homeland other than leaking info), and are just callously allowing him to ravage the world's major countries because it isn't their problem.
- Anti-Hero: Jericho is a violent criminal who isn't allied to either the CIA or Xavier and will retaliate if either attacks him first. However, after getting Bill Pope's memories and bonding with Jill and Emma, he grows to care for them and goes after Xavier and his men when they attack him, abduct them and threaten the world.
- Black-and-Grey Morality: Xavier is shown to be a ruthless anarchist who wants to gain control of the United States' nuclear arsenal to cause mass destruction. Quaker and the CIA, who are trying to get back control of the nukes, are no saints either, as they are willing to experiment on people and allow innocent civilians to die in order to get what they want, but they are obviously still heroic in comparison.
- Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: Xavier Heimdahl, who's trying to obtain the Wormhole program, which will give him control of the US's nuclear arsenal to destroy every government in the world.
- Britain Is Only London: Although most of the main characters are American, the film is set in London.
- Electric Torture: What Xavier uses on Bill.
- Happily Married: Bill and Jill.
- Heel–Face Turn: Jericho makes his complete turn when he's told that Jill and Emma's lives aren't important. His response:Jericho: They're important to me.
- Hero Antagonist: Quaker Wells' goal is to find the Dutchman's location before Xavier in order to stop him from getting control of the nuclear codes, but to accomplish this, he approves of experimenting on a prisoner and later deems that Jill and Emma — his own agent’s widow and daughter — are expendable when they are being held hostage by Xavier as bait for Jericho.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Bill/Jericho has the Dutchman fix the Wormhole program so that any missile Xavier fires will turn back and target him instead.
- I Have Your Wife: Xavier forces Bill/Jericho to give him the Wormhole program by holding Jill and Emma hostage.
- Idiot Ball: When Quaker manages to make a deal with Jericho to get him to lead the CIA to the Dutchman, on-route to the safe-house, he gets word that the Dutchman may have been sighted at an airport (which is actually a distraction by Heimdahl). Instead of pursuing both leads, he goes back on the deal and tells his agents to send Jericho back to jail while he pursues the false lead. This backfires when it turns out that it wasn't the Dutchman, and Heimdahl's goons almost manage to capture Jericho before he escapes again.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Bill is tortured with a cattle prod by Xavier, then killed after he refuses to give up the Dutchman.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Jericho does this first to the guys whose van he steals, later to Xavier's Number Two Elsa (beating her to death with a lamp), and finally to one of Xavier's soldiers using an axe.
- The Sociopath: Jericho, due to brain damage suffered as a child. He doesn't feel hate, love or empathy, leading him to commit a long string of senseless crimes. By the time he is used as a guinea pig in the film's experiment, he's spent most of his life in prison.
- Transferable Memory: An experimental procedure is used to put deceased CIA agent Bill Pope's memories into the brain of convict Jericho Stewart.
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: Michael Pitt's attempt at a Dutch accent is terrible, and he mispronounces his own last name.
