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movie review - Criminal

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

This is a strange and violent story about transplanting the memories of a dead spy/soldier into the brain of a death-row prisoner with a neurological condition that means he'll never have empathy and will never deviate from his life of violent disregard for society. With an absolutely top-notch cast I had high expectations for this thing.

But it doesn't seem that everyone showed with the same level of commitment. Costner is all in as one might expect, and Reynolds present evocative characters but the rest of the cast seems somehow uncomfortable. The story has one job - show the changes in the criminal who's now carrying around the memories and becoming someone new, while trying to defuse the situation. Costner could easily carry this kind of thing.

But the movie collects problems as it goes along. The direction is uneven and the villain unfortunately is one of the no-shows in this thing. I started skipping through it to get past some of the cringe. I waded through to the end but regret doing so.

Not recommended.