Several years ago I saw and reviewed Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol (2011) (you can read the full review here) and noted the following:

Have you ever seen a film that, upon exiting the theaters, you could tell it underwent some major revisions in the story it was trying to tell?

In the case of MIGP, if felt to me the film took a major deviation in its climax and I strongly suspect (still do!) the movie’s bad guys were intended to be Josh Holloway’s Hanaway (a character who apparently dies in the opening act…a strange choice to have a fairly recognizable actor like Mr. Holloway in what amounts to little more than a cameo role) and his girlfriend/fellow agent, Paula Patton’s Jane.

The film, IMHO, leads to this revelation up to the sequence in the very tall building in Dubai.  It was there I was absolutely certain Hanaway would be revealed as not dead and Jane, seemingly distraught at the death of her boyfriend and wanting revenge, was really a double agent working alongside him.

For whatever reason the film’s makers decided not to go there and, as I explained in my review, the movie’s climax was hurt (but, to be fair, not fatally) by this change.  I suspect MIGP would have been far better/shocking -and made more sense- had they gone that way.

I had similar feelings, though on a smaller scale, with the movie Criminal.  The film was an entertaining action/thriller with a small yet significant sci-fi element whose use reminded me a little of the John Woo directed, John Travolta/Nicholas Cage starring Face/Off.

The movie opens with Bill Pope (Ryan Reynolds) in the process of doing …something… in London.  We know he’s on the run and avoiding some suspicious people who are after him.  He gets a bag full of money and a passport and, we find, is not only being chased by some dubious characters but also tracked by a CIA office run by Quaker Wells (Gary Oldman).  Wells is frantic to figure out where Pope is going and provide him protection.

While fleeing Pope manages to call his wife Jill (Gal Gadot) for what will turn out to be the last time he speaks with her…ever.  Not long afterwards Pope is captured by the people pursuing him but not before hiding the money he got.  Despite being tortured, Pope refuses to tell the bad guys what they want to know.  By the time the CIA finds him, he’s already dead.

Whatever Pope was up to was big league stuff and the CIA, desperate to figure out what exactly he was up to before he died, contact Dr. Franks (Tommy Lee Jones).  Dr. Franks is working on a way of transferring the memories of one animal into another.  The CIA tasks him with transferring the memories of the deceased Bill Pope into someone else so they can figure out what he was up to before he was killed.

Enter Jerico Stewart (Kevin Costner), a psychopathic -and imprisoned- killer who had severe brain trauma as a child and cannot feel or distinguish emotions or right versus wrong.  His frontal lobe never developed due to this brain trauma and therefore he is the one, the only subject which Dr. Franks feels may be successfully used to transfer Pope’s memories and find the information the CIA is so desperate to get.

All the while, the clock is ticking…

I won’t go into too many more SPOILERS and please note what I’ve written above occurs in the movie’s first fifteen or so minutes.

Suffice to say Criminal centers around the psychopathic Jerico as he struggles with Pope’s emerging memories…all while the villains are closing in.

Criminal is a pretty good action film, IMHO, that could have been even better had the script been tightened down a lot more (You knew I was going to get back to that Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol stuff eventually, right?).

The fact is that the movie’s opening minutes are far more confusing than they should be.  For whatever reason Pope’s mission was kept under wraps until later in the film and this was a mistake.  They could have told audiences just how important the mission was right off the bat and that would have made us care more about Pope and, later, Jerico.

When Jerico is brought in, there is a choppiness here as well, as if parts of the script were tossed in favor of keeping the movie’s runtime reasonable (the movie nonetheless clocks in just shy of 2 hours).  We quickly hurry through introductions to Dr. Franks and Jerico so we can (also very quickly) get him to England and then out on his own.

Despite the choppiness, the film settles down and, to its great credit, Kevin Costner is quite good in the central role of Jerico.  He is something of a Frankenstein monster, gruff and confused yet slowly -and sometimes angrily- reacting to the humanity that is starting to spread for the first time into his system.

The movie features an astonishingly large cast of recognizable actors, many of whom, amusingly enough, were previously featured in comic book or sci-fi fantasy type films.  Let’s see now: Kevin Costner/Waterworld & The Postman, Man of Steel/Batman v Superman, Gary Oldman/Commissioner Gordon in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Tommy Lee Jones/Two-Face in Batman Forever, Gal Gadot/Wonder Woman, Ryan Reynolds/Green Lantern & Deadpool, and, finally Alice Eve/Star Trek.

I point out Alice Eve last and here, again, I get the feeling her character’s place in the movie as released is a good example of what had to be major script changes.  Alice Eve’s character, Marta Lynch, is a CIA agent and, I can only guess based on her very limited role, Quaker Wells’ right hand man.

As presented in the film, Marta Lynch is little more than an extra who could have been played by anyone.  One can argue whether Ms. Eve is an “A” list actress or not, but she has a very long resume and has been featured in several very big movies yet her role here is so small and anemic that one wonders why a) she took the role and b) why the movie’s producers would hire her as she no doubt commands far better pay versus a smaller, lesser known actress.  Again, I can’t help but think there was more involved in the character of Marta Lynch but as the film was made her role was chopped down to near nothing.

Despite these oddball elements, I recommend Criminal.  It may not be The-Very-Best-Action-Film-Ever-Made© but it is a pleasant enough diversion whose chief strength lies in a very enjoyable acting turn by Kevin Costner.

Before I go, here’s the movie’s official trailer.  If you decide to see it, beware…it comes perilously close to revealing a little too much about the film.