Criminal
Release Date:
September 10, 2004
Limited release
On the Big Board |
| Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
| 68/128 |
Max Braden |
A lot of this seems like a ripoff of the Bourne movies, from the CIA observation room to the head issues. It's an okay thriller. |
Whomever coined the old adage that there is honor among thieves obviously never went to the movies. For while that may be true elsewhere with those who eke out an existence on the wrong side of the law, in Hollywood, one crook is almost always undercutting another.
Such is the case with Criminal, which is the English-language version of an Argentinean film, Nine Queens. In this tale of con artists conning not only their marks but each other, a valuable and extremely rare piece of currency, the 1878 Monroe Silver Certificate, is the bait in their bait-and-switch, and the con-men and their various accomplices hope to sell a forged Monroe Silver Certificate to a wealthy media mogul. Their time is short; the mogul is a resident of Monaco, and has only one day left on his US visa before he will have to leave the country or face taxation on his vast worldwide holdings (no, I don’t know how that one reckons out, either, but hey, suspension of disbelief and all that). Everyone wants their cut along the way, and the ending is reportedly a twist worthy of The Usual Suspects, although anyone who has seen the original film will already know what is coming, as Criminal departs very little from that film’s plot.
Criminal is brought to us courtesy of George Clooney’s and Steven Soderbergh’s Section 8 Productions, and is scheduled for a limited release beginning September 10, 2004. What reviews - make that review - currently extant for the film are very positive, and since the film follows very closely the plot of the original Nine Queens, it will likely draw not only fans of that film, but of heist and con films as well. It will be interesting to see how it fares after opening, as this is the type of film that word-of-mouth could help immensely...or kill aborning. Given the quality of the talent involved, however, one would expect, at the very least, a fascinating character study of the grifters who populate the edges of lawful society. (Stephanie Star Smith/BOP)
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