Criminal (2004)

So much average

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Captivating movie !

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

American remake of the 2000 Argentinian film "Nine Queens" features John C. Reilly in a superlative performance as a sometimes-successful Los Angeles con-man who partners with a Spanish grifter he meets one morning trying to swindle waitresses in a casino; they become involved in a scheme to dupe an Irish billionaire out of 750 Gs with a rare (and counterfeit) bill of foreign currency. Director Gregory Jacobs, who also co-wrote the script with Sam Lowry (the pen name of Steven Soderbergh), wisely allows Reilly lots of room to go into his maniacal arias, which is a good thing since little else in "Criminal" quite measures up to him (certainly not that generic title!). Although the colorful supporting cast is excellent, Reilly is the spark plug to the entire picture--a fact which makes the final curtain something of a let-down. Since this house-of-cards scenario is filled with cross and double-cross, it's difficult to fault the general plotting (it's a writer's conceit, after all); however, the impetus of this story--how it all gets set into motion--is questionable by the denouement. Still, an engrossing and enjoyable film with a high-wire acting job from Reilly, which might have received a great deal more acclaim had the overall results been stronger. **1/2 from ****

As I scan the many laudatory reviews of this movie posted above, I find myself asking myself just what kind of movies from the past 30 or 40 years these reviewers have been watching, or indeed if they've watched any. No genre ages more quickly and more badly than the "big con" movie, since the whole satisfaction of the viewer hinges on the big final scene - which we know from every "con artist" movie from "The Sting" to Mamet's "House of Games" and which, inevitably, recurs in every familiar detail as the big closing scene of "Criminal" - in which all the characters who have been presented to us throughout the film as having no connection with one another - street-robbers, cops, "mark"s etc. - are revealed - gasp!! - to have secretly been part of some big coordinated scam after all. In a sense, that scene has been "used up" and dramaturgically useless since "The Sting", and all the subsequent "big con" movies of the 80's and 90's, have had to add some very special extra ingredient - such as Mamet's plumbing of the sexual and psychological abysses beneath the "con/mark" relation - in order to be movies of any even limited note. "Criminal" offers no such special angle or special depth and tries to trade on nothing but the - by now hopelessly threadbare - fascination of lives led according to the principle of the double-double-cross and the "nothing is what it seems". Precisely that, however, is the film's psychological downfall in the face of an audience which is - or which one would have assumed ought to be - as familiar by now with the conventions of this genre as it is with those of the mafia movie. The cinema MUST surely have taught us all enough about the lives and work of conmen by now for us to find it ludicrously improbable that either of the two main characters would be willing to expose thousands of dollars of money already "in hand" in order to secure the alleged "sure thing" of a deal that is to net them many thousands more (after all, it is the endemic idiocy of such greed and of the general greed-driven tendency to forget the "bird in the bush" principle that is the very basis of a conman's livelihood). Around this central crying improbability there cluster a dozen others, hardly less egregious: The John C. Reilly character would really have agreed in twenty seconds to the offer of the currency expert not to reveal that the note was a fake in return for a share of the money? Hardly, since it is hard to imagine a simpler way for the mark to find out that the note he was buying WAS indeed a fake than to send the currency expert along with just such an offer? Would he really have permitted any arrangement which might even possibly result in his parting with the note and having in hand, in return, only a CHECK which needed to be taken to a bank and cashed? The idea is ridiculous, since it would clearly involve running the risk of there happening what actually does happen at the bank in the penultimate scene. It seems that filmgoers and DVD-viewers are so desperate for that ever-more-elusive "wow-I-didn't-see-THAT-coming!" kick that large numbers of them are willing, these days, to bring their own willing paralysis of basic cogitative capacities to that "walking dead" genre, the "grifter movie". Well, at least I'll be spared hours of head-shaking incomprehension when I read on here in a couple of months rave review after rave review of a new mafia movie which features a scene in which the rat receives with relief and unconditional enthusiasm the message from the boss: "Sure, I know you helped set up the hit on my kid brother, and I'm not too happy about it. But I really need someone to help me watch out for the arrival of a drugs shipment down at the docks at 3 am tonight, so I'm willing to say: 'let bygones be bygones'. But remember to bring a couple of bags of cement so we both have something to sit on."

I rented "Criminal" when I briefly read the description of the plot. When I started to see it, I realized that it was a remake of the Argentinian "9 Queens". What a disappointment! I believe any remake should make it clear that it's a copy/ adaptation of another (foreign or local) film. I am not against remakes, I just feel that I am entitled to know this detail, specially if they completely change the name/title. By the way, in my opinion "9 Queens" is way superior to "Criminal". First, both lead actors are more authentic in "9 Queens", and they are very representative of a period of Argentinian reality. Diego Luna's average Mexican immigrant looks and accent made him a complete miscast, and Gyllenhaal just imitated the Argentinian leading lady.

Before setting forth reading my review of Criminal, you must take into account that it's apart of a genre that I cannot get enough of. Even if I finally have gotten out of an obsessive heist/ con phase that lasted almost half a decade, I still glow with infinite enthusiasm when I see one. I've seen Criminal about eight times now. Not as many times as I've seen Ocean's Eleven and Twelve, The Good Thief, Bound, Heist, or Gambit, but considering the amount of time that spans from the present and the time when I first saw it, eight is a big number.Considering the point of view of someone who is not as enthusiastic about heist and con movies, I would have to say this movie is a forgettable piece of channel-flipping entertainment. It's a very well-written, well-acted movie, but you have to be at least a little bit of a fan of the genre, because there's nothing else you can consider it to be. It has the subtlest elements of comedy, drama, and thriller. It couldn't be ruled out as one of the three, because they each blend in so elusively into the film's atmosphere. If you are a fan of the genre, you are in for a more than satisfying treat, almost an orgasm. If you are not, I suppose you can like it well enough, mainly for John C. Reilly's fantastically sleazy performance.It's a great con story with truly surprising twists all through the film, beginning with a series of wonderfully clever short cons that are surely not repeated from any other con films (and believe me, even the most obscure con film you can think of I've probably seen). It's a brain- buster but very relaxing to watch, an easy recliner of a movie, possibly thanks to the very plain, simplistic film-making, almost like an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. John C. Reilly adds loads to the level of enjoyment one gets out of this movie, very clearly enjoying his genuinely nasty, arrogant, greedy character. He steals every scene, among other things, and makes for one of the most entertaining grifters in the movies, loud and care-free rather than the usual introverted yet unrealistically suave stoic that we usually see as the thief or con artist in these movies. His level of crassness and immorality, which he blatantly cares nothing about, is sometimes laugh-out-loud hilarious in that low-brow way.