Movies: Criminal

There's a whole cottage industry in Hollywood of taking foreign films and adapting them to American tastes. Sometimes this approach is successful (like "The Ring," a beat-for-beat remake of the Japanese horror film "Ringu"), and sometimes, it leads to movies like "Criminal."

"Criminal" is a story about two con artists who happen to meet and decide to "cooperate" on a big score. There's lots of twists and turns, lots of small-time cons, and plenty of decent performances on display. I've never seen the award-winning Argentinian film "Nine Queens," which the movie is supposedly based on, but I doubt it had the cultural tension that exists between the two leads here - John C. Reily and Diego Luna (of "Y Tu Mama Tambien" fame).

Ultimately, though, a lot of things happen that begin to feel more cartoonish than real. And the finale, where all the trickery and fraud comes to a head, seems to beg the question - how hard is it to con someone when literally everyone plays along?

Rating: 6/10