THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE (Spain/Belgium/France/Portugal - 2018; US release 2019) Directed by Terry Gilliam. Written by Terry Gilliam and Tony Grisoni. Cast: Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce, Stellan Skarsgard, Olga Kurylenko, Joana Ribeiro, Jordi Molla, Sergi Lopez, Rossy de Palma, Jason Watkins, Oscar Jaenada, Hovik Keuchkerian, William Miller, Paloma Bloyd, Will Keen, Jorge Calvo, Antonio Gil, Rodrigo Poison. (Unrated, 133 mins) Terry Gilliam is no stranger to overcoming obstacles and adversity in bringing his vision to life, whether it's running wildly over budget on 1989's THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, bitterly clashing with Universal studio head Sid Sheinberg on 1985's BRAZIL and Miramax's Harvey Weinstein on 2005's THE BROTHERS GRIMM, or being forced to completely overhaul 2009's THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS after Heath Ledger's sudden death midway through production. But those were walks in the park compared to Gilliam's Sisyphean ordeal in getting THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE made. A dream project he began mulling over around the time of BARON MUNCHAUSEN, THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE was conceived by Gilliam and frequent collaborator Tony Grisoni (the pair also worked together on 1998's FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS and 2006's TIDELAND) as a revisionist take on the classic Miguel de Cervantes novel Don Quixote, and began shooting in September 2000 with beloved French actor Jean Rochefort as Don Quixote and Johnny Depp as Toby, a present-day marketing executive who gets sucked back in time to the 16th century and is mistaken for loyal sidekick Sancho Panza by the aging and insane knight-errant.
Jean Rochefort in Gilliam's unfinished 2000 version
On the first day of filming, the problems started: while completing some early location work in Spain, Gilliam discovered that the constant flights from a nearby NATO training base would render the sound unusable, necessitating post-production dubbing and sound effects. On the second day, a hailstorm and some intense flash floods destroyed some equipment and altered the appearance of the surrounding cliffs, forcing Gilliam to scrap all of the first day's work since the shots wouldn't match. On the third day, Gilliam was told that the production's insurance company wouldn't cover the cost of the damaged or lost equipment. Then some actors started bailing. On the fifth day, the 70-year-old Rochefort was in obvious pain, wincing during takes and unable to ride a horse. He flew to Paris to visit his doctor and was diagnosed with a double herniated disc that required immediate surgery. With no timetable set for the return of Rochefort--who never acted in an English-language film to that point and spent several months learning the language just for the role--Gilliam and Depp soldiered on, shooting whatever they could to work around his absence, but production was soon suspended. By November, the ailing Rochefort was still sidelined under doctor's orders and the French producers and their insurers--citing the flood damage and Rochefort's medical issues as "acts of God"--shut down the production for good two months into filming. This was chronicled in the 2002 documentary LOST IN LA MANCHA, directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe and intended to be a making-of for the eventual DVD release, but the production grew so chaotic and cursed so quickly that they were gifted with an opportunity to create their own feature film instead.
While working on other projects in the ensuing years, Gilliam always had DON QUIXOTE on the backburner. From 2003 to 2016, he made it to various stages of pre-production, with Robert Duvall, Michael Palin, and John Hurt attached as Quixote at certain points (production was nearly set to begin in mid-2015 but was halted once more when Hurt was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer), along with Depp, Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell, and Jack O'Connell as the time-traveling Sancho Panza stand-in. A falling out and protracted legal battle with Portuguese producer Paulo Branco (who later tried--unsuccessfully--to halt the film's release, the stress of which contributed to Gilliam suffering a minor stroke in May 2018), and the implosion of a distribution deal with Amazon almost derailed the film again in 2016, but shooting finally began--finally, for real--in March 2017 with Gilliam's BRAZIL star Jonathan Pryce, who was originally cast in another role back in 2000, as Quixote, and Adam Driver as Toby. Gilliam and Grisoni had plenty of time to revise and restructure the story, and much like AVATAR had been brewing in James Cameron's head for so long that he used bits and pieces of it in other films over his career, longtime Gilliam fans will recognize familiar ideas and characterizations that may have surfaced in a similar form in his work over the last 30 years (there's more than a little of John Neville's Baron Munchausen and Robin Williams' Parry from THE FISHER KING in Pryce's portrayal of Don Quixote). But unlike Gilliam's 2014 film THE ZERO THEOREM, it doesn't play like a stopgap Gilliam's Greatest Hits package. THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE is the best thing Gilliam's done since 1995's 12 MONKEYS, and it's so near and dear to its maker's heart that you can sense his passion in every scene, almost like he can't believe it's finally being made. Or that after nearly 30 years of this being his white whale (the opening credits have a self-congratulatory "25 years in the making...and unmaking"), he'd have absolutely no excuse for not getting it right.
In Spain shooting a TV commercial, Driver's Toby is a former film school wunderkind who long ago succumbed to jaded cynicism, selling out to work in advertising. He's inspired when his obnoxious boss (Stellan Skarsgard) picks up a bootleg DVD from a gypsy peddler (Oscar Jaenada). It's Toby's award-winning student film from a decade earlier, a micro-budget, black-and-white version of Don Quixote that he shot in a nearby village, starring a cast of locals headed by simple, elderly shoemaker Javier (Pryce). Unable to focus on the TV commercial, Toby impulsively leaves the set and visits the village, which is still feeling the effects of the movie shoot from ten years ago: local innkeeper Raul (Hovik Keuchkerian) remains bitter over Toby telling his teenage daughter Angelica (Joana Ribeiro) that she could be a movie star, prompting her to run away in search of stardom that has only led a life as an escort for wealthy men; and Javier still remains in costume as a sideshow attraction, convinced he's Don Quixote. "Quixote" sees Toby and thinks he's Sancho Panza returning to serve as his faithful squire for more marvelous adventures in "chivalry."
Johnny Depp in the abandoned 2000 version
To say anything more would deprive you of the rambunctious and inspired mayhem that transpires, running the gamut from slapstick comedy to heartfelt drama (most notably, the time-travel element has been mostly jettisoned, with Gilliam having used it extensively in 12 MONKEYS and with the idea of alternate realities in THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS, which really seems to have been a landing point for a lot of his initial QUIXOTE ideas). In a performance that would be generating awards buzz if this got any kind of release (it was given a one-night Fathom Events screening in theaters before heading to VOD on April 19, courtesy of Screen Media Films), Pryce is an absolute joy to behold. Watching him here, it's easy to imagine an alternate universe when Gilliam made this 25 or 30 years ago with a still-living Peter Sellers as Quixote. Pryce is matched by Driver, who spends much of the film in a state of sustained rage and confusion over the often absurdist plot turns that make this the funniest film Gilliam's done since his days in Monty Python.
Following the multi-decade nightmare of getting THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE out of his head and on the screen (Fulton and Pepe have also made their own sequel, HE DREAMED OF GIANTS, detailing the events following LOST IN LA MANCHA), Gilliam turns Quixote's saga into a very personal one that deals with the effects of the creative process and the sacrifices made in the name of art and integrity, whether it's an obsessive, ambitious filmmaker like young Toby blithely unaware of his impact on Javier and Angelica, or the cynicism and bitterness that can take hold when nothing goes right (Skarsgard's "The Boss" even casually tosses out "Act of God" as an excuse at one point, echoing the producers who shut the production down in 2000). It's a film that marches to the beat of its own drum, unafraid to go off on unexpected tangents and not really concerned with tying everything together, but always entertaining and never feeling self-indulgent. Considering the number of times he's faced insurmountable odds over his storied career, and let's be honest, some of it he brings on himself (re: THE BROTHERS GRIMM, why even get involved with a control-freak studio head known industry-wide as "Harvey Scissorhands" unless you're looking for a fight?), it's just nice to see this work as beautifully as it does and to see that ultimately, the struggle was worth it. THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE (Gilliam dedicates it to Rochefort and Hurt, both of whom died in 2017) is just exuberant filmmaking on an grand scale, and the best buddy movie of 2019 so far.
Remember last summer when everyone had a good laugh over how terrible GOTTI was? Who knew that it was just John Travolta's warm-up act for SPEED KILLS? Well, congratulations, BATTLEFIELD EARTH, because you're no longer Travolta's worst movie. Another true crime saga that might as well be comprised of GOTTI outtakes, SPEED KILLS stars the two-time Oscar-nominee and former actor--also one of 42 credited producers and wearing what appears to be his GOTTI rug after it was left out in the rain and he tried to dry it in the microwave--as Ben Aronoff, a thinly-veiled and likely legally-mandated rechristening of Don Aronow, a champion speedboat racer and the head of powerboat manufacturer Cigarette Racing, who was killed in a Miami mob hit in 1987. The film then flashes back to his beginnings in 1962, after he made fortune as a New Jersey construction magnate and moved to Florida to pursue an interest in speedboat racing, quickly falling into a "business arrangement" with famed mobster Meyer Lansky (James Remar). His racing and his business soon take precedence over his family, much to the chagrin of his devoted wife Kathy (Jennifer Esposito) and their eldest son (Charlie Gillespie), who winds up paralyzed in a boating accident trying to emulate his superstar father. This dramatic turn is conveyed in narration from beyond the grave by Aronoff, who says "While I was winning championships, I was losing something far more important." He gets over that pretty quickly and is soon hooked up with Emily (Katheryn Winnick), the girlfriend of Jordan's King Hussein (Prashant Shah), who's one of Aronoff's clients. Through the years--it's often difficult to tell because the period detail is atrocious and no one looks any different from 1962 to 1987--Aronoff's speedboats are the transport of choice for South American drug smugglers, who come to him to buy in bulk as he willingly provides false registrations. This catches the attention of FBI Agent Lopez (Amaury Nolasco), who sports the same shaved head and perfectly manscaped stubble in scenes set from the late 1960s to 1987. Tied to Lansky's outfit even after the aging gangster's death, Aronoff tries to make some side deals, including massive government contracts manufacturing boats for both the DEA and the Coast Guard, which comes about after he sells a Blue Thunder speedboat to Vice President George H.W. Bush (Matthew Modine). This doesn't sit will with Jules Bergman (Jordi Molla), the Lansky organization's man in Miami, or with Robbie Reemer (an embarrassingly bad Kellan Lutz), Lansky's hotheaded nephew who wants his cut of Aronoff's action.
Like GOTTI, SPEED KILLS is a collection of scenes in search of a coherent story. It's no wonder director John Luessenhop (TEXAS CHAINSAW) took his name off the finished film, with credit going to apparent Alan Smithee protegee "Jodi Scurfield." It's hard telling how this gets from one point to another, even as you're watching it. Aronoff expresses an interest in speedboat racing, and the next thing you know, he's a speedboat legend with deep mob ties and a completely new family. Esposito just disappears from the film, as does another Aronoff girlfriend (Moran Atias), when he sees Emily, sleeps with her, then in the very next scene, they've got a toddler son whose name we never even hear. There's no dramatic tension, no logical timeline of events, and no reason at all to care. It's like Travolta saw Tom Cruise in AMERICAN MADE and decided to make his own home movie version of it. It's unacceptably sloppy, from the rudimentary, Playstation 1-level CGI during a boat race in a massive storm to a close-up of a subpoena with a misspelled "SUBPEONA" on it. A film so ineptly-made and irredeemably awful that you'll feel sorry for Tom Sizemore being in it, SPEED KILLS is Travolta hitting absolute bottom. When the camera focuses on Aronoff dying after being shot multiple times in his car (of course, there's a close-up of his watch stopping as he takes his last breath, for maximum hackneyed dramatic effect), Travolta's strangely cryptic narration intones "I was on top of the world!" So, who exactly are we talking about here? (R, 102 mins)
The makers of SPEED KILLS don't give a shit. Why should you?
THE CAR: ROAD TO REVENGE (US - 2019)
It was demanded by no one, but 42 years after the 1977 demonic car-from-Hell cult classic THE CAR, Universal decided to bestow upon us a DTV sequel from DEATH RACE 2050 director G.J. Echternkamp, who's not exactly shaping up to be the next Roel Reine. It's really a reboot at best, and actually feels more like a ripoff of the 1986 sci-fi thriller THE WRAITH. Shot on barely-dressed sets that make it look like BLADE RUNNER on a Bulgarian backlot, the dreary THE CAR: ROAD TO REVENGE is set in a dystopian future where James Caddock (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA's Jamie Bamber), an ambitious, unscrupulous district attorney, is going all out to ensure the conviction and execution of the city's criminal element. He's got a data chip containing a ton of incriminating evidence against Talen (Martin Hancock), a megalomaniacal scientist and crime lord who's created an army of genetically-enhanced street punks who look like they wandered in from a Thunderdome cosplay convention. Talen's goons break into Caddock's office, torture him, and toss him out of his office window, sending him crashing through the roof of his high-tech sports car. This causes a melding of sorts, Caddock's spirit fusing with the car to become an instrument of driverless revenge. Meanwhile, hard-nosed cop Reiner (DEFIANCE's Grant Bowler) tracks down Caddock's ex-girlfriend Daria (Kathleen Munroe), who was seen with him the night he was murdered and is now being pursued by Talen, the assumption being that he stashed the data chip with her.
What does any of this have to do with THE CAR? Jack shit, that's what. Universal's press release sees fit to mention Ronny Cox "returning as The Mechanic," but considering he played not a mechanic but sheriff James Brolin's deputy in the 1977 film, it begs the question, "Has anyone in Universal's 1440 DTV division even seen THE CAR?" Cox turns up about 65 minutes in and exits five minutes later as a junkyard owner who finds Caddock's damaged car and switches its parts with an old relic that's identical to the customized 1971 Lincoln Continental used in the original, after which it repays the favor by running him over and killing him. Cox is never shown with any other cast members and it's doubtful they flew him all the way to Bulgaria for a two-scene cameo that looks exactly like something hastily-added in post to get someone from the original film onboard after James Brolin repeatedly let their calls to go voice mail. Filled with janky CGI, over-the-top gore, badly-dubbed Bulgarian bit players, and a bunch of shitty, dated nu-metal on the soundtrack (including a 2012 song by ex-Queensryche guitarist Kelly Gray and Queensryche drummer Scott Rockenfield sporting the prophetic title "No Redemption"), THE CAR: ROAD TO REVENGE is one of the most cynical scams perpetrated by a major studio in a quite a while. It's a sequel in name only, a reboot in the vaguest sense, and entertaining in no conceivable way. (Unrated, 89 mins)
The plot owes a lot to The Punisher, with Seagal starring as Col. Robert Sikes, a former Special Forces legend long MIA, who's resurfaced in Salt Lake City to take out the trash. Perching himself on rooftops, sniper Sikes takes out all the city's scumbags, from drug dealers to gang leaders to pimps to corrupt politicians, and every evil-doer in between, including powerful mobster Romano (James Russo). It's all part of an elaborate revenge plan after his wife and son were killed in a driveby. Irate cop Peterson (Louis Mandylor) is at a loss, and things aren't helped by the interference of eccentric, alcoholic, knife-happy FBI agent Porter, played by once-promising actor-turned-barely recognizable cosmetic surgery cautionary tale Craig Sheffer (remember when he got top billing over Brad Pitt in Robert Redford's A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT?). Ex-military Porter knows Sikes ("He's trained to be a ghost...a shadow!") and spent time with him in Afghanistan, so he knows what he's up against ("To stop him, I must become him"). But before you can say Porter is the Trautman to Sikes' Rambo, Winnick throws in a plot twist that's hilariously stupid but takes such chutzpah that you can't help but begrudgingly admire it, if for no other reason than it's the most inventive way yet that a Seagal director has dealt with an actor whose laziness knows no limits. As usual, Seagal is always shot solo and never directly interacting with a co-star, never more apparent than when he and Sheffer awkwardly come to blows and Winnick valiantly tries--and fails--to work around the fact that the actors in a fight scene aren't there at the same time. It's too bad Winnick doesn't have the balls to stick with the twist, introducing it and almost immediately walking it back in a way that's unsatisfying and makes no sense. Even if the twist worked and Winnick followed through with it, CODE OF HONOR ranks among the worst Seagal films, which is saying something. It's so sloppy and unprofessional--the CGI is bush-league; a shot of a rappelling Seagal against a Hanna-Barbera-looking greenscreen is laughable; the producers can't even gather a reasonable number of Salt Lake City pedestrians to create a convincing crowd shot (probably too cheap to give them lunch); recurring shots of newscasters on TV are just bad actors reading their lines off of laptops--that it's a Master P or Silkk the Shocker cameo away from being an I'M BOUT IT rapsploitation homage. (R, 107 mins)
TERM LIFE (US - 2016)
It's not every day you get Vince Vaughn in a combination Moe Howard/Beatles moptop rug with botched heists, corrupt cops, and bloody shootouts in a crime thriller directed by Ralphie from A CHRISTMAS STORY, so it's too bad TERM LIFE completely fails to live up to its batshit potential. Making his grand entrance into the world of VOD, Vaughn headlines this uneven and generic non-thriller that made it to just 50 screens after Universal kept it on a shelf for two years, eventually and inexplicably releasing it through their foreign/arthouse "Focus World" division. Vaughn and his hairpiece star as Nick Barrow, an Atlanta heist coordinator who plots elaborate break-ins and sells them to the highest bidder. His latest customer is Alejandro (William Levy), a seemingly small-time criminal whose cohorts rob the cash from police evidence room and are immediately massacred by a crew of corrupt cops led by Keenan (Bill Paxton). Unbeknownst to everyone, Alejandro's father is Viktor Vasquez (Jordi Molla), a major south-of-the-border cartel boss who arrives in town looking to avenge his son's murder. Sold out by the contacts who put him in touch with Alejandro, Barrow assumes he doesn't have long to live and takes out a huge life insurance policy to leave to his estranged 16-year-old daughter Cate (TRUE GRIT Oscar nominee Hailee Steinfeld). The policy won't go into effect for three weeks, so he and a rebellious Cate hit the road and lay low, attempting to evade both Viktor and Keenan. The chase leaves a trail of dead bodies and superfluous guest appearances: Vaughn's buddy Jon Favreau as his scheming go-between, Terrence Howard as a clueless sheriff, Taraji P. Henson as the insurance agent, Shea Whigham and Mike Epps as Keenan's partners in crime, plus a nice supporting turn by the great Jonathan Banks as Nick's fatherly friend Harper. In the hands of a renowned action thriller director like Peter Billingsley (COUPLES RETREAT), the plot is extremely predictable, with bland, monotone narration by Vaughn to cover up the holes and attempt to keep it moving. Far too much time is spent on father-daughter arguments and maudlin bonding, as the pair are supposed to holed up in their motel room to avoid being seen, but of course go out for ice cream and on the ferris wheel at a carnival and get seen. It's the kind of movie where people have to do incredibly stupid shit to keep the story advancing. This is about as run-of-the-mill and forgettable as they come, aside from Vaughn's ridiculous pelt, which would have even Nicolas Cage looking away in embarrassment. (R, 93 mins)
BY THE SEA (US - 2015)
BY THE SEA was supposed to be a major holiday movie season awards contender at the end of 2015, but then someone from Universal must've actually watched it and quite obviously saw this tedious, self-indulgent Brangelina vanity project for what it was. The studio pretty much bailed on it, stalling its release at just 142 screens in the US for a gross of $530,000. There's a reason you've probably never even heard of this Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie home movie: BY THE SEA completely fell off the radar and became an afterthought even to its own distributor, taking an unusually long seven months to hit DVD/Blu-ray. Now going by Angelina Jolie Pitt, the Oscar-winning actress also wrote and directed this scenically lovely but utterly inert exercise in channeling her inner Michelangelo Antonioni. She captures the look and feel of that sort of cold and distant late 1960s/early 1970s European art film (plus a good chunk of the dialogue--whenever Pitt or Jolie interact with the supporting cast--is in French with English subtitles) and fuses it with a presumably very personal John Cassavetes-style examination of marital dysfunction (Jolie cited the great Gena Rowlands as an inspiration, and the screen legend appears with the star couple in one of the bonus features). But when it's all said and done, it's a thoroughly empty experience, alienating but not in the Antonioni way Jolie likely intended. It's a well-crafted forgery that looks like a 45-year-old film, from the 1970s Universal logo that opens it to the characters chain-smoking while wearing gaudy, oversized eyewear, but to what end? Jolie nails the look, but the script is trite and predictable and the characters not only unlikable but completely uninteresting. It's a boring, ponderous slog, the kind of movie where Jolie's character returning from a walk and announcing "They made fresh pastries" constitutes a major plot development.
Arriving at a seaside French hotel, blocked writer Roland (Pitt) and his wife Vanessa (Jolie) are looking to get away, primarily from each other. She spends the days moping around the hotel room and sobbing while Roland drinks himself into a daily stupor at a nearby bar, getting sage advice from kindly widower bartender Michel (Niels Arestrup). Vague references to a recent tragedy and Friedkin-esque subliminal flashes hint at the divide between them, and it grows wider when they meet Francois (Melvil Poupaud) and Lea (Melanie Laurent), the newlyweds who've checked into the neighboring suite. Through a small pipe hole in the wall left by a removed radiator, Vanessa voyeuristically watches the young couple. Roland eventually joins her, the two becoming a peeper version of WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, drawn together and taking tentative steps toward reforming their bond after observing Francois and Lea having anal sex (a LAST TANGO IN PARIS nod, perhaps?). It's still not enough for Roland and Vanessa to overcome their malaise, ennui, self-pity, self-loathing, and their general shittiness as human beings, as they continue to tear one another down in hurtful ways, with Vanessa going so far as to sabotage Francois and Lea's marriage as a way of dealing with her own pain. "Am I a bad person?" Vanessa asks Roland. "Sometimes," he replies, adding "We have to stop being such assholes." Not making BY THE SEA would've been a good start. (R, 122 mins)
CRIMINAL (US - 2016) Directed by Ariel Vroman. Written by Douglas Cook and David Weisberg. Cast: Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, Alice Eve, Gal Gadot, Ryan Reynolds, Michael Pitt, Jordi Molla, Antje Troue, Scott Adkins, Amaury Nolasco, Colin Salmon, Natalie Burn, Lara Decaro. (R, 113 mins) Your tolerance for the high-concept sci-fi espionage actioner CRIMINAL is dependent upon a number of things: how much you can suspend your disbelief, how much you can stomach graphically brutal and gleefully over-the-top violence, and how perversely fascinating you find serious, award-caliber actors slumming it in a trashy genre offering from Cannon cover band Millennium (I'd recommend running the Cannon intro on your own as the movie starts to get the maximum effect). To Millennium's credit, they brought their A-game to this, opting to actually shoot a London-set story in London instead of their usual unconvincing Bulgarian backlot. Even their go-to CGI clown crew at Worldwide FX seems to have admirably stepped up to the challenge and produced possibly the best splatter and explosions they've ever done. At a cursory glance, CRIMINAL has "straight-to-VOD" written all over it, but with a wild script by the late Douglas Cook (he died in July 2015) and David Weisberg, the same duo who wrote THE ROCK (Michael Bay's one legitimately awesome movie), assured direction by the promising Ariel Vroman (the little-seen 2013 mob movie THE ICEMAN), and an absurdly overqualified cast, CRIMINAL ultimately transcends its dubious first impression and if you're approaching it in the right mood, ends up a hell of a lot more enjoyable than it has any business being.
When London-based CIA agent Bill Pope (Ryan Reynolds, who's all over the trailers but not in the print ads or the poster) is tortured and killed by international terrorist Xavier Heimdahl (Jordi Molla--was Rade Serbedzija busy?), his London CIA bureau chief Quaker Wells (a ranting Gary Oldman) needs vital info Pope had but has no way of obtaining it. Enter Dr. Micah Franks (Tommy Lee Jones), who's spent 18 years working on the transplanting of memories but is still five years away from human trials. Wells decides that time is now when the dead Pope's brain is kept alive and Franks--short for Frankenstein?--springs Jerico Stewart (Kevin Costner) from a maximum security hellhole to be their guinea pig. Stewart, a psychotic, sociopathic, zero-remorse killing machine who feels no emotion and no pain thanks to a broken home and a childhood abuse incident where he suffered a traumatic brain injury at the hands of his enraged dad that caused his frontal lobe to stop forming at the age of ten, is flown to London and has Pope's memories injected into his brain. The experiment doesn't initially take, and despite the sympathetic Franks insisting Stewart needs more recovery time, an impatient Wells orders him terminated. Of course, Stewart ends up escaping custody and heading on a rampage across London when Pope's memories start materializing in his head. Stewart is alarmed to find that he can suddenly speak French (though he thinks it's Spanish) and has tastes for the finer things in life like lattes, but he's still Jerico Stewart and can't stop himself from killing innocent people in cold blood or beating the shit out of a pompous asshole in a coffee shop ("Who punches someone in a patisserie?" the outraged victim yells, in one of the many intentionally funny bits). With Wells and the CIA as well as Heimdahl's ruthless hit woman Elsa Mueller (Antje Troue) in hot pursuit for the information that is becoming clearer by the minute, Stewart eventually hides out with Pope's widow Jill (Gal Gadot), and feels genuine emotion for the first time when Pope's perceptive and impossibly cute daughter Emma (Lara Decaro) is nice to him. Stewart finally grows a conscience and decides to act on Pope's memories, which involved negotiating a CIA deal with hacker Jan Strook, aka "The Dutchman" (Michael Pitt), who has the ability to override all US military launch codes and intends to sell that info to the megalomaniacal Heimdahl, a crazed anarchist hell-bent on bringing down all of the world's governments.
Costner, introduced in chains with long hair and a madman beard like Sean Connery in THE ROCK and speaking in a guttural, Nick Nolte grumble, has never cut this loose onscreen before, whether he's hamming it up as the insane Stewart or bopping his head Roxbury-style as he steals a van and cruises around London looking for trouble. But when Stewart grows more human thanks to the gradual clarification of Pope's memories that trigger actual feeling within him, Costner gives Liam Neeson some serious competition in the "60-and-over asskicker" club by demonstrating acting chops that a Van Damme or a Dolph Lundgren wouldn't had this been a typical Millennium/NuImage offering. Jones remains low-key and somber and doesn't have much to do after the initial surgical procedure, and the same goes for Alice Eve, prominently billed in a thankless supporting role that gives her nothing to do. Likewise for DTV action hero Scott Adkins, who's in the whole movie as one of Wells' flunkies but is tragically underused, only getting a few "Yes, sir, whatever you say!"s to Oldman and no action scenes of his own (speaking of Adkins--while Vroman does a fine job, here's another larger-scale Millennium/NuImage project that would've been perfect for Isaac Florentine). With his hair flopping all over the place and froth forming in the corners of his mouth, Oldman works at two speeds here: irritable and apoplectic. He paces around what looks like a vacant BOURNE crisis suite as everyone watches monitors, waiting for just the right time to bellow "Find Jerico Stewart!" and "It's him! Let's go!" or, in his more introspective moments, "FUCK!" like a bloviating jackass who seems blithely unaware that he's got a ridiculous name like "Quaker Wells" (Adkins' character is listed as "Pete Greensleeves" in the credits, but I don't recall any of the agents working under Wells ever being referred to by name). CRIMINAL is total empty calorie junk food, but it's junk food of the highest caliber. Like sweets and snacks that really do nothing good for you, you just need them once in a while, and CRIMINAL scratches that '80s/'90s throwback itch not just with its ridiculous premise and hooky electronic score by Brian Tyler and Keith Power (yes, like nearly everything else these days, it's "Carpenter-esque"), but with the casting of real actors--I wonder if Costner, Oldman, and Jones did any JFK reminiscing between takes--to seal the deal.
