Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

petdix-1 cinematography starts out excellent, actors talented but do not bother with this film. I love Eddie Izzard and Steven MacIntosh; all the other actors were excellent but this was a hateful script, which tortures viewers. We readily identify with MackIntosh's & Natasha Little's characters, so evil done to them is spikes driven into our eyeballs. Not since "Clockwork Orange" have I hated a film so intensely and I admit that Clockwork had redeeming values, art-wise & social commentary-wise. "The Criminal" was a lame excuse for someone who is de-sensitized to violence (whether by video games or limbic system dysfunction) to slam viewers' heads down onto a table. I put it on fast fwd after 20 minutes into the film and made stops to catch up with dialogue, skipping violence. Thus, for me, the film was thankfully 45 minutes long. Despised the ending. Let it be known that my favorite writer is Dostoyevsky. So I'm not a suburban granny making whiny comments. I can handle intensity/violence if the plot is worthwhile & characters get to develop (I have to hand it to MackIntosh, his work in this was, as usual, top notch). My favorite movies are "Dr. Zhivago" and "Gangs of NY" (and I recently appreciated "In Bruges") These films do not spare the viewers' sensibilities, with Cossaks slaughtering innocents and Bill Cutting's vengeful personality. Please DO see Anything else that these talented actors have done & best wishes to the script writer. Director, you've got talent but get out of this genre, it's old hat.

vkumar Beware all the positive reviews. Reading that this film bears any resemblance to a Guy Ritchie film made me cringe."Contrived" never described a film as perfectly as it does this one.From laughable bad-cop antics, to pointless paranoid schizophrenics and finally to an brief and amateurish handling of serious political issues, "The Criminal" promises to fail to engage the mind of the sophisticated movie-watcher.That said, "The Criminal" isn't terrible. For the most part, the acting is better than average, and there certainly isn't a lack of action. However the writing and directing are marginal at best. 4 out of 10.

The_Void The Criminal is undeniable proof of the adverse affect that Pulp Fiction has had on cinema. The title of the movie is actually ironic, as the movie itself is no better than a common criminal. After paying money to see it, you'll see why. Basically, The Criminal is a huge waste of 90 minutes. I can think of multiple better things to do in 90 minutes than watch this movie, one of them involving your own toenails and a pair of rusty pliers. After seeing the film, I doubt that you will disagree. It is with that in mind that I say; don't bother with this movie. The premise of The Criminal is actually quite intriguing, and you'll be forgiven for thinking that the film is worth watching for that reason. After the first ten minutes, you'll think that you've made the right choice in deciding to see the movie. You're wrong, but you won't know it yet. The movie opens with a man chatting to a woman in a bar. After hearing his speech about dance music being rubbish, you'll be utterly convinced that you're in the right film, but you're not. The man and woman, after some banter, go back to his apartment. Events transpire, and she ends up dead. Shock, horror! Indeed, as it's down, down, deeper and down from then on. And just to clarify; I don't mean 'down' as in 'down into Britain's criminal underworld', unfortunately.Steven Mackintosh takes the lead in this film. You'll almost certainly recognise this man from one of Britain's good crime films; Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The character that Steve plays here is, in fact, only a certain plant away from being the same character that he played in Lock, Stock; namely, a wimp who happens to be in a world of criminals. The rest of the cast isn't noteworthy, with the exception of the police inspector. He isn't noteworthy for anything but swearing a lot, however. He swears and he swears and then he swears some more. That's all he does, and it gets beyond a joke after the third or fourth swear word. It's a blatantly obvious attempt to cash in on the childish 'coolness' of profanity.Pulp Fiction's influence can be seen all too often through this film; but what The Criminal doesn't realize is that just because it worked for Pulp Fiction, doesn't mean it will work here. At times, the film works in flashback sequences that just pop up from nowhere, it sometimes uses cool dialogue to convey it's points, and sometimes puts stuff in just for the sake of having it there; and all in all, it's extremely annoying. That's all this film is really; annoying. Annoying, boring and unoriginal sums it up perfectly, and it is, with no fear of a lie, one of the worst movies of recent years. Maybe even of all time

George Parker "The Criminal" is a noirish Brit crime flick which tells of a man (Mackintosh) who is in the wrong place at the wrong time and finds himself as a murder suspect on the run from the police and a bunch of super secret underground heavies. A busy flick with little to offer save a bunch of running around, "The Criminal" suffers from low budgetness, a thin plot, lots of filler, and an awful ending. An okay time waster for the couch potato who can't find anything better. (+D)