Memory Transfer, Not Mind Control: How Criminal Actually Worked
Most people remember Kevin Costner as the guy who got shot in The Bodyguard. In Criminal (2016), he plays a career criminal named Cooper whose dying memories are grafted onto an FBI agent, played by Guy Pearce. The whole premise hinges on something called engram transfer — the idea that skills, instincts, and muscle memory can be pulled out of a brain and injected into another person. It sounds like pseudoscience until you watch what happens to Pearce's character, Pope, as fragments of Cooper flood in. The film was produced by Paramount and directed by Ariel Vromen. It had a budget somewhere in the $35–40 million range and opened to mediocre reviews. But there are actual details about the cast and the production that most people don't know, and they're worth looking into if you're curious about how this movie tried something different with the spy genre.
The Untold Stories Of The Cast Of The Movie Criminal Behind The Roles That Redefined Espionage
Kevin Costner's role was deliberately unconventionable. He's spent decades playing noble figures — the righteous sheriff, the patient father, the honorable rancher. Cooper is none of that. He's a sociopath with a talent for improvising his way through situations. Costner approached the character with a complete lack of sentimentality. In interviews around the release, he mentioned that the physical preparation was minimal because Cooper's danger comes from his mind, not his physique. Costner reportedly spent time talking with Vromen about making the character feel like someone who was always three steps ahead, even when he wasn't alive to do the stepping. Gal Gadot's involvement is probably the most discussed piece of casting news. She was already a global phenomenon from the first two Wonder Woman films when Criminal started production. Her character, Sarah, is a woman with significant screen time but almost no backstory revealed on camera. Gadot herself said in promotional material that she found the role frustrating because the script didn't give her much to work with beyond competence and loyalty. She approached it by treating Sarah as someone who had been through her own losses, which gave her a quiet intensity that works even when the material doesn't support it fully. Guy Pearce's performance is the technical centerpiece. His character undergoes a transformation where Cooper's memories progressively overwrite his own personality. Pearce played this as a gradual erosion rather than a sudden switch. There's a scene halfway through where Pope — Pearce's character — looks in a mirror and for a fraction of a second reacts the way Cooper would react. Pearce built that moment from the inside out. He reportedly worked with a movement coach to develop a distinct physicality for Cooper, something looser and more predatory than Pope's rigid FBI stance. The challenge was layering both physicalities so the audience could see the shift happening in real time.
Michael Peña plays Fanning, a technician who handles the memory extraction process. Peña brought his usual energy to the role but grounded it in something specific: he approached Fanning as someone who understood the ethics of what he was doing and felt complicit in the abuse of that technology. This isn't something the script explicitly states, but Peña's performance adds that dimension quietly. You see it in the pauses, in the way he avoids eye contact during certain moments. Kerry Condon appears as Bishop, another government handler involved in the operation. She plays the role with a cold efficiency that makes her one of the more memorable characters despite limited screen time. Condon has a background in television drama and brings that discipline to a part that could have easily become a cartoon villain. The supporting cast includes David Dastmalchian as the younger version of Cooper seen in flashbacks. Dastmalchian is known for playing deeply unsettling characters, and this role leaned into that completely. He had to convey Cooper's charisma and menace in roughly forty minutes of screen time spread across the film. His approach was to play Cooper as genuinely charming rather than obviously threatening, which makes the later reveals about what Cooper is capable of more effective.
Get the Full Details
What Made This Film Different From Typical Espionage Movies
Most spy thrillers follow a predictable structure: someone gets recruited, learns the ropes, faces a moral compromise, and either accepts or rejects the world they've entered. Criminal takes a different path by removing the traditional recruitment arc entirely. Pope is already an FBI agent. He doesn't need to learn how to spy. What he needs to learn is how to survive having someone else's personality living inside his head. The engram transfer concept draws loosely from real neuroscience research. Memory engrams — the physical traces of memories in the brain — have been identified in animal studies. Researchers at MIT and other institutions have used optogenetics to tag and reactivate specific memories in mice. The film takes this a enormous leap further and suggests that complex skill sets and personality traits can be transferred between individuals. That's science fiction, but the attempt to ground it in actual research gives the story a credibility that pure fantasy wouldn't have. One thing the film gets right is the psychological toll of identity confusion. Pope spends a significant portion of the movie unable to distinguish between his own memories and Cooper's. This isn't just a plot device — it's something that mirrors real dissociative experiences. People with severe PTSD or dissociative identity disorder sometimes report feeling like their memories don't belong to them. Pearce seems to have tapped into that understanding to make Pope's confusion feel genuinely unsettling rather than just confusing for the audience.
The action sequences are relatively straightforward. The film doesn't try to reinvent the wheel there. What it attempts is more interesting: showing how a trained operative's instincts persist even when the conscious mind doesn't fully understand them. There's a fight scene mid-film where Pope reacts to an attack before he consciously decides to fight. That's Cooper's body memory taking over. It's a small moment but one that reinforces the central premise effectively.
Production Challenges and Behind-The-Scenes Details
Principal photography took place primarily in Los Angeles and New Orleans. Vromen chose locations that felt worn and functional rather than sleek, which contrasts with the typical spy movie aesthetic. The engram transfer laboratory, for instance, looks more like a basement clinic than a high-tech government facility. This was a deliberate choice to suggest that the technology is real but not widely available or approved. Costner was in his sixties during production and brought a physical presence that the script acknowledged. Cooper isn't a young man in this story — he's older, experienced, and therefore more dangerous than someone half his age would be. Costner's age adds a layer that younger actors couldn't provide. The film could have recast with someone younger, but that would have weakened the implication that Cooper had decades of criminal experience distilled into those memories. Gal Gadot's scheduling was complicated by her commitment to the DC Extended Universe. Production had to work around her availability, which meant certain scenes were shot out of sequence and some planned material was cut. Reports from the set suggested that Gadot's role was expanded during post-production through reshoots, but the final product still feels like the character was underdeveloped. This is a common issue when major stars have compressed schedules — the story compromises around their availability rather than the other way around.
The film's score by Henry Jackman incorporates electronic elements mixed with traditional orchestration. This mirrors the central theme of old memories colliding with new technology. The music doesn't try to be subtle about it, but it serves the film adequately without drawing attention to itself.
What the Cast Said About the Project
Reviews from the cast after release were mixed in tone. Costner seemed to take the project seriously despite its flaws. He didn't dismiss the script or the premise, which is notable given his track record of being selective about roles. Pearce was more openly enthusiastic, speaking about the unique challenge of portraying dual consciousness in a single performance. Gadot was notably less engaged, and her later interviews suggested she viewed the project as a paycheck rather than a creative opportunity. One thing that doesn't get discussed enough is the relationship between Pearce and Costner on screen. They barely share scenes together — Costner appears mostly in flashbacks and vision sequences. The chemistry between their characters is built through editing and performance rather than direct interaction. This is an unusual dynamic for a film where the two characters are essentially the same person at different stages of existence. It works because both actors commit fully to their respective versions of Cooper, making the transitions between them feel continuous despite the separation. The film's box office performance was underwhelming, grossing around $60 million worldwide against its budget. Critical reception was poor, with many reviewers calling it derivative and poorly executed. But there's a case to be made that the core idea has merit and that the cast did solid work within the constraints of a flawed script. Criminal didn't redefine espionage cinema, but it attempted something that most big studio films wouldn't risk.
Why This Film Matters More Now Than It Did in 2016
The concept of memory transfer has only become more relevant since Criminal was released. Advances in brain-computer interfaces, neural mapping, and AI-driven data analysis have pushed the boundaries of what's theoretically possible in this space. The film imagined a future where this technology exists; the real world is slowly approaching that frontier in other contexts. For anyone interested in how espionage fiction has evolved, Criminal represents a mid-point in the genre's trajectory. It came after the era of tech-heavy spy thrillers like the Bourne series and before the more psychologically driven approach seen in films like Enemy of the State era content. The film's attempt to merge hard science with personal identity struggle is something that contemporary audiences are likely to find more compelling as real-world neuroscience continues to advance. The cast's performances, particularly Pearce's layered work, deserve more recognition than they received. Watching Criminal now, with the benefit of hindsight, it's easier to appreciate what the film was trying to do rather than dismissing it for what it failed to achieve. The underperforming box office and harsh reviews don't change the fact that Criminal asked a genuinely interesting question and had the right people attempting to answer it on screen.
