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Criminal: Mini-review

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Kevin Costner

What this movie does to Kevin Costner’s career is criminal

D+Ryan Reynolds‘ career is on a roll now, but he needs to steer clear of movies in which one man’s memory is transplanted into another man’s body. It didn’t work out too well in Self/Less, and the results are even worse, both for Reynolds and the audience, in Criminal. 

Actually, Reynolds is only on hand for the first 10 minutes of Criminal before his character, CIA agent Bill Pope, is tortured and killed by an international terrorist (Jordi Molla) trying to find the location of a potential doomsday device. In order to get the information Pope had and find the device before the terrorist does, Pope’s boss, Quaker Wells (Gary Oldman), has a scientist, Dr. Franks (Tommy Lee Jones) perform an experimental operation transferring Pope’s brain cells into the body of convicted murderer Jericho Stewart (Kevin Costner). Before he reveals what Pope knew, however, Stewart escapes custody, killing several people, and both the CIA and the terrorists are after him.

The plot of Criminal is completely preposterous, but it’s the type of movie that might be over-the-top fun in the right hands. Unfortunately, director Ariel Vromen plays it far too straight. From the moment the audience realizes that Pope left behind a wife (Gal Gadot) and adorable moppet daughter (Lara Decaro), there’s no doubt where Stewart is headed. Of course, Pope’s implanted memories eventually allow Stewart for the first time in his life to feel emotions for Pope’s loved ones. Before that, however, Costner is fun to watch for a while as he casually and brutally beats up anyone who literally gets in his way. The fun quickly wears off as the nearly non-stop violence is excessively brutal and overdone. Unfortunately, there’s little else besides Costner’s performance to recommend in Criminal. Gary Oldman bellows and blusters through every scene while Tommy Lee Jones compensates by mumbling his lines. The plot is needlessly convoluted. and almost every character in Criminal is, well, criminally stupid, seemingly for the sole purpose of allowing dozens of stunt persons to meet sometimes grisly demises. And, while the movie has plenty of set pieces, Vromen’s handling of them is rather pedestrian. Ironically, Nicolas Cage turned down Costner’s role in this movie; that one fact should tell you all you need to know about whether to see Criminal. 
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Deadpool: Mini-review

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Ryan Reynolds

Ryan Reynolds without mask, still with sense of humor.

BThe mantra, “With great power comes great responsibility,” has become the theme, not just of Spider-Man, but of virtually every other modern-day movie and comic superhero as well. They may be all-powerful, but they rarely have much fun. Against such a backdrop of gloom and angst, Deadpool, the character, as well as the movie, is a gloriously excessive, frequently delightful exception.

Deadpool, the character, begins life as Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds), a cocky, profanity-spouting, quick-witted “merc(enary) with a mouth.” When he is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he leaves his hooker girlfriend Vanessa (Morena Bacarin) and undergoes a radical experimental treatment he thinks can cure him. Instead, the treatment turns Wade into a horribly disfigured mutant with remarkable healing powers. Wade escapes from Ajax (Ed Skrein), an arms dealer who devised the treatment and wanted to sell Wade as a superpowered slave. Then, as the costumed Deadpool, Wade seeks his revenge against his former captor. 

Although Deadpool‘s origin story is as grim as they come, the movie itself is a lighthearted romp, thanks to Ryan Reynolds, who never takes his role seriously, and a script that’s filled with self-aware references and quips. Reynolds breaks the fourth wall frequently, addressing the audience directly and poking fun at himself and the entire Marvel Comics universe in the process. Deadpool is the first film in years that lets Reynolds take full advantage of his fast-talking, snarky wit, and the movie’s R-rating means that much of the humor is hilarious yet unprintable. That rating also allows first-time director Tim Miller to cram the action scenes with stylishly shot, slow motion gore and carnage. However, Deadpool treats Wade’s romance with Vanessa (a character who is as quick-witted and foul-mouthed as Wade) seriously enough to keep the movie from becoming totally silly. Still, Reynolds’ non-stop barrage of foul-mouthed humor wears thin after a while. Fortunately, the final showdown, pitting Deadpool and a couple of mutant allies recruited from the X-Men franchise against Ajax and his superpowered henchwoman Angel Dust (Gina Carano), provides just the right blend of humor and action. That blend makes Deadpool unlike any other comic superhero film out there and may well breathe new life into an increasingly overwrought and predictable genre. 
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Self/less: Mini-review

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Ryan Reynolds

Ryan Reynolds is pretty much his old self here

C+The idea behind Self/less, that the wealthy can extend their lives by appropriating the bodies of younger, healthier people, presents fascinating moral, ethical, and psychological issues that could easily fuel a dozen or more similar movies. Unfortunately, after carefully setting up its premise, Self/less instead appropriates the form of a generic action thriller.

The process used in Self/less involves transferring the mind and memory of one person, wealthy but cancer ridden Damian Hale (Ben Kingsley), into the body of another, desperately broke Ryan Reynolds, who agrees to “die” in order to pay his own sick daughter’s medical bills. Damian doesn’t know this is what’s happening; he thinks that his new body was somehow grown from scratch by the man responsible, Dr. Albright (Matthew Goode). At first, Damian’s new life in his younger body is nonstop fun, sex, and games, but when he forgets to take his medication one day, he has visions of his younger self’s former life. A now understandably curious Damian pays a visit to the younger self’s wife (Natalie Martinez) and eventually figures out what Albright has done.

As an action thriller, Self/less is competently made with a fair share of requisite chases and fight scenes, Viewers, however, soon realize that the movie cuts every corner possible in search of a predictably happy ending. Damian himself comes across as merely a hard-nosed, workaholic businessman who very conveniently inherits the body of a highly trained combat vet. Worst of all, the film avoids having to seriously question the morality of the regeneration process by turning Albright into a combination sinister huckster and prototypical mad scientist. Reynolds is a likable hero but never manages to convince the audience he’s the younger version of Kingsley. Instead, it’s the real Kingsley who gives Self/less what power it has in only fifteen minutes of screen time. Self/less seems to lose its creative life about the same time Damian loses his actual one, but, unlike Damian, the movie never really comes back. 
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Woman in Gold: Mini-Review

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Helen Mirren

Helen Mirren supplies Woman in Gold with plenty of dramatic weight

B-The trailers for Woman in Gold, the fact-based drama about an elderly woman’s attempt to reclaim her family’s artwork that the Nazis stole in World War II, suggest that the movie is a legal thriller, Unfortunately, any lawyer can tell you that following the progress of a case, no matter how compelling the subject matter, as it makes its way through the legal system, is often as exciting paint dry. Indeed, that’s the main problem the movie faces.

Woman in Gold actually tells two stories. In one, an elderly Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren) hires an attorney (Ryan Reynolds) to help her reclaim paintings by Gustav Klimt that her Austrian family owned before World War II. After the Germans stole and later abandoned the paintings, they wound up on permanent display in a Vienna museum, widely regarded as national treasures. In the other story, a young Adele (Tatiana Maslany) sees the paintings taken and then barely escapes Austria alive, leaving her parents behind to meet their fate.

Despite most viewers’ familiarity with the subject matter through decades of other cinematic portrayals, Woman in Gold‘s flashback scenes have a power and immediacy that the more recent scenes lack. Simply put, Woman in Gold is a movie whose “present day” scenes (the bulk of the film stretches from 1998 to 2006) involve bureaucratic wrangling and a court case based on an obscure point of law. As Maria’s attorney (Randy Schoenberg, grandson of the Austrian composer August Schoenberg) points out, part of the Austrian government’s strategy is to appeal and delay as long as they can in the unstated hope that Maria will die or otherwise drop her quest for the paintings. Unlike the similarly structured Philomena, Woman in Gold winds up dragging on more than one occasion as its characters have little to do but wait as the months and years go by. Fortunately, director Simon Curtis can call on Mirren to revive viewer interest through her colorfully quirky performance in one scene after another. Mirren’s performance and the flashback scenes ensure that viewers never lose sight of what’s at stake in the movie or the depth of Maria’s outrage at an Austrian nation that was complicit in the Nazi takeover a half century earlier and remained unwilling to acknowledge its responsibility ever since. Woman in Gold is not the masterpiece its subject matter deserves, but it does give viewers a view of art at its finest, both the Klimt paintings and the acting of Helen Mirren. 
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