Criminal (2016)

Criminal is a 2016 American action crime thriller drama film directed by Ariel Vromen^[4] and written by Douglas Cook and David Weisberg. The film is about a convict who is implanted with a dead CIA agent's memories to finish an assignment. The film stars Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, and Tommy Lee Jones, in the second collaboration between all three following the 1991 film JFK. The film also features Alice Eve, Gal Gadot, Michael Pitt, Jordi Mollà, Antje Traue, Scott Adkins, Amaury Nolasco, and Ryan Reynolds.

Principal photography began on September 4, 2014, in London. The film was produced by Campbell-Grobman Films and Millennium Films and was released on April 15, 2016.

When Spanish industrialist-turned-anarchist Xavier Heimdahl arranges for his associate Jan Strook—a hacker known as "the Dutchman"—to create a wormhole program that would allow the owner to bypass all computer codes protecting the world's nuclear defense codes, the Dutchman panics and attempts to hand his secret over to the CIA. He makes contact with London-based agent Bill Pope, but although Pope is able to get the Dutchman to a safe house and recover the money to pay him for his services, he is caught by Heimdahl's men and tortured to death before he can tell anyone where he hid the Dutchman.

Desperate to find the Dutchman, Pope's CIA supervisor Quaker Wells contacts Dr. Micah Franks, who has developed a treatment that could theoretically plant the memory patterns of a dead man onto a living one. Keeping Pope's brain stimulated to preserve its knowledge, Franks requests that convict Jerico Stewart be the subject of the procedure, as Stewart's criminal behavior is the result of childhood brain trauma leaving him with an underdeveloped frontal lobe, hindering his emotional development and impulse control, that they can use to "graft" Pope's knowledge into Stewart's mind.

While the process initially appears unsuccessful, Jerico is able to escape custody while being transferred after the operation, faking his death and heading to Pope's house, where he ties Pope's wife, Jillian, to her bed and gags her mouth with duct tape, is able to disable the house alarms and delay an investigation of the silent alarm which Jillian manages to activate. As time goes on, he experiences memory flashes of Pope's past, but all he can determine is that the bag of money was hidden behind a shelf of books relating to George Orwell, without identifying where it or the Dutchman are kept.

The CIA becomes increasingly anxious to find the Dutchman when they learn that he is now planning to sell the program to the Russians, believing that the CIA has betrayed him. Fortunately, they are able to find Jerico after he contacts Dr. Franks for medication using Pope's CIA codes, Franks's questioning confirming that Jerico is developing emotions as well as drawing on Pope's experience. As Jerico attempts to retrace the route Pope took to hide the Dutchman, Heimdahl creates a distraction at the airport that draws Quaker's attention, allowing Heimdahl's henchwoman Elsa to try and capture Jerico, killing his CIA guards before Jerico escapes by driving off a bridge.

His leg injured in his escape, Jerico retreats to the Pope house, where he encounters Jillian and explains the situation to her. Although initially concerned, Jillian comes to accept Jerico's story as she sees him interacting with her daughter, Emma, allowing Jerico to stay the night. Jerico forms a bond with the two. The next morning, Jerico realizes through a conversation with Jillian that the bag is hidden in the rare books collection at the University of London where she works. He attempts to retrieve the bag, but he is captured by Heimdahl and Elsa once he has found it. Heimdahl forces him to take them to the Dutchman or he will kill Jillian and Emma.

With the CIA and a Russian strike team now seeking the Dutchman, Jerico—who has recalled that Pope hid the Dutchman in Jillian's office at the university—is able to escape Elsa using an improvised nitro-glycerine bomb, returning to the office to provide a hurried explanation to the Dutchman. The two are caught by Elsa before they can escape, Jerico is shot in the shoulder and after she kills the Dutchman, Jerico knocks her out with a potted cactus before killing her by bashing her head in with a lamp.

Taking the flash drive containing the wormhole program to the airfield where Heimdahl is attempting an escape, Jeriho is able to save Jillian and Emma despite Quaker's protests about the danger Heimdahl could pose with the program. As Heimdahl's plane takes off, Jerico reveals to Quaker that he had the Dutchman reprogram the wormhole so that it would target the source of the next transmission, resulting in Heimdahl unwillingly destroying his own plane when he tries to fire a missile at the airfield.

A few months later, Jerico is shown on the beach where Pope and Jillian had their honeymoon, initially unresponsive to anything but automatic reflexes and responses. With all other options exhausted, Quaker and Franks take Jillian and Emma to see him, the sight of Pope's family confirming that some part of Pope exists in Jerico when he responds with a nose-tap that was Pope and Jillian's way of saying "I love you" in private. Witnessing this, Quaker reflects that he will offer Jerico a job.