Criminal (2004)

The story of a couple of con-artists who meet in a casino and agree to work together on a temporary basis. They start off by pulling a number of relatively light-weight scams, but eventually come across a golden opportunity, which brings the movie the movie to its surprising climax.

Criminal contrasts one man who has swindled everyone around him and simply looks out for himself, with another man who has turned to crime to help his father pay a debt but really doesn't like taking advantage of people. Directed by Gregory Jacobs and produced by George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh, Criminal is a sort of poor man's, low-tech, Ocean's Eleven without the big star thunder.

Aside from Diego Luna, who has a great role as a naïve, young hustler learning the ropes from an older, more experienced, but unlikeable, con-man, there really wasn't much to this film. The dialogue was relatively plain, the acting flat and the cinematography typical. By the end of the movie, I was tired of the predictable misfortunes which happened a little too often to the characters to be believable.