Criminal (2016) poster
2016 · action · crime · sci-fi · spy

Criminal

Directed by Ariel Vromen1h 53m2016
ElsewhereIMDb6.375kRT30%Metacritic36
  • heavy
  • kinetic
  • extreme
  • inventive
  • cold
  • twisty
Movie DNA

Heavy, breathless, extreme action / crime, surreal in texture. Nihilistic, epic, cold, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

CIA Agent Bill Pope is on a mission to track down a shadowy hacker named 'The Dutchman'. When he gets mysteriously killed, an experimental procedure transfers his memories into a dangerous ex-convict. When he wakes up Pope's memories, his mission is to eliminate The Dutchman before the hacker launches ICBMs and starts World War III.

Our read · Criminal (2016) reads as a heavy, breathless, surreal action · crime · sci-fi entry — extreme in intensity, epic-stakes in scope, cold in temperature, nihilistic in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

Where the cast leads
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The shape of Criminal

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want pulpy sci-fi action with Costner as a violent antihero.

ends warmyou’ll be fine aftergrabs you earlygrips by minute 3attention 3/5breezes by
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upgraphic violence

Skip it tonightYou need coherent plotting or hate memory-swap B-movie premises.

If Criminal is your film
Self/less (2015)
Body-swap sci-fi with action stakes
(Ryan Reynolds cameo isn't enough)
Lucy (2014)
Brain-hacking action with absurd science
(Scarlett Johansson vehicle feels too slick)
Crank (2006)
Relentless pulpy antihero momentum
(Hyper-stylized chaos exhausts you)
DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
Nearest by DNA

Eight films that read most like this one.

Closeness in the twelve-axis space — how the film actually reads, not “people also liked.”

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