Criminal
2016 · Directed by Ariel Vromen
Original language: English
- action
- crime
- science fiction
The story
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.
What it’s like
Gritty, washed-out London and Lisbon-adjacent grime: the film leans on cold, desaturated blues and greys, handheld close work in cramped interiors, and the flat fluorescent glare of CIA safehouses and holding cells, with the London Underground and rain-slicked streets giving it a damp, unlovely texture. The score is low, pulsing and tense rather than melodic, and the soundscape is full of hard impacts, sirens and buzzing screens. Its vibe is bleak, brutal and paranoid, the kind of night-watch thriller you put on alone with the lights off. The pacing is punchy and procedural, with frequent cutaways to fragmented memory flashes that unsettle more than they explain. Violence is frequent and often ugly: beatings, shootings and knife work land with real weight, and there is some grim, nihilistic cruelty and profanity, though no sexual content. The emotional register is hard and cold, with a violent ex-convict slowly, unwillingly developing some conscience under a borrowed mind. It suits viewers who want a brutal, high-tension action thriller with a rough edge and no softness.
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