Criminal starts with Ryan Reynolds as a CIA superspy named Bill Pope, on assignment in London, soon finding himself surrounded by murderous assassins working for an international super-terrorist from Spain named Xavier "The Anarchist" Heimbahl.  Heimbahl is looking for a man named, Jan "The Dutchman" Stroop, who is a genius hacker who has managed to infiltrate American defense systems that control the launch and destination of nuclear missiles, hoping to rid the world of the governmental/corporate choke-hold that he thinks is responsible for all of the world's ills.  Pope is tortured for info, then offed, but Pope's boss in the CIA, Quaker Wells, knows that nearly every life on Earth may hang in the balance of getting information Pope had, deciding to throw a 'hail mary' by bringing in a scientist named Dr. Franks to perform the first human memory transplant from one human to another.