When Jan Stroop (Michael Pitt), a hacker known as “The Dutchman” claims he will sell his program to control the U.S. Ballistic Missile System to the highest bidder, London-based CIA agent Bill Pope (Ryan Renolds) is sent undercover to strike up a deal with Jan. But Bill is captured and tortured to death by the anarchist Heimbahl (Jordi Malla), who wants “The Dutchman” for himself.

This loss of Agent Bill prompts CIA boss, Quaker Wells (Gary Oldman) to invest in a procedure made by Dr. Franks (Tommy Lee Jones), which involves transferring the mind from one person to another. This will allow for the CIA to use Billy’s memories to find “The Dutchman” before Heimbahl does.

The subject for the newly created operation is life-long criminal, Jericho Stewart (Kevin Costner).

The operation is a success, but with one side effect; Jericho, being a sociopath, is completely incapable of feeling emotions or empathy for other people.

With the wild and dangerous Jericho on the loose, containing CIA secrets in his head, it’s a race against time for Quaker to get Jericho back in line and find “The Dutchman” and his program before Heimbahl.

Wow. And that’s just the basic info you can get from watching a trailer. There are a couple plot details I left out, but I’ll touch on those later.

As you can tell, it’s a pretty bloated plot, with one action/thriller cliché after another. That’s the main problem with “Criminal”; it has a lot of good ideas that would be right at home in any fun, B-grade action movie, but the execution of said ideas is poorly handled making for one odd movie as it goes from head scratching character decisions, to wide plot holes.

That’s not to say “Criminal” is a complete bore to sit through, however.

There was an interesting character plot with Jericho, who while delighting in his own immoral freedom, begins to come under the influence of the personality of Bill Pope. He starts to care for others, especially when he meets with Bill’s wife Jill (Gal Godot) and their daughter Emma (Lara Decaro.)

This character arc is one of the better points of “Criminal.” Helped along by an engaging performance by Costner, watching Jericho’s behavior and gradual change over the course of the movie was very pleasing.

His interactions with Jill and Emma give this spy-thriller, with a hint of sci-fi, a pleasant sense of heart while the rest of the movie is all guns-blazing-typical-action-movie-flair.

Along with Costner’s performance, Oldman and Jones stick out as two other high points of the film, especially when their characters clash over how to handle Jericho. Oldman, as Quaker, wants to get right down to business and treat Jericho as a tool. Jones, as the conflicted Dr. Frank, wants to take time and still see Jericho as a person.

Other than that, Heimbahl is a bit of a bore as an extremely cookie cutter anarchist, while other characters are the typical character tropes you’d find in any other spy thriller.

Overall, Criminal is not so bad. It clips along at a pretty good pace. But as stated before, all the ideas it has with the brain switching, the hacker plot and the pulpy action movie conventions would have worked so much better with a cleaner execution.