Criminal ***Spoilers***

Good movie. Not as good as I was expecting having seen and loved Nine Queens (the Argentinean masterpiece to which Criminal is the remake of) but it was still good.

Now, I don't know how it'd play not having seen Nine Queens before, but since I have seen it, I have to compare them. And Nine Queens is a million times better than this one.

First, all the tricks (and I mean ALL) that they pull off are taken exactly from Nine Queens (well, except in the location), and the whole story and backstories (Diego Luna's father, John C. Reilly and Maggie Gyllenhaal's problem with the inheritance) are taken from Nine Queens too. Having said that though, they are very well done, very well.

John C. Reilly and Diego Luna are very good (still not as good as their Argentinean versions though) and Maggie Gyllenhaal is ok though she doesn't have much to do, which is much less than the same part in Nine Queens.
The rest of the cast is ok, nice to see Enrico Collatoni in there (from Just Shoot Me) though he's not a good actor.
What I really hated was the scene of John C. Reilly confessing to his little brother. Awful scene by the actor playing the brother, displaying some horrible acting there.

The main story about the job they're pulling off is not as well explained as in Nine Queens, and it's much simpler here.
And the characters didn't have the chemistry that Nine Queens had, specially John C. Reilly and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Not very convincing as brother and sister. Their story with the inheritance didn't seem as important and problematic as in Nine Queens.

They also left some stuff out from the original, like the song that Diego Luna tries to remember in what scene. That little story runs all along the Nine Queens. Here they just barely mentioned it.
Then the ending, which is not as good as in Nine Queens, though it still ends in the same way but the bank part is different. And it didn't have all the energy and and tension that Nine Queens had.

One thing I liked, is how they translated the Argentinean feel of Nine Queens to Criminal's LA.
When I heard about the movie being remade I said: "No way they can pull it off. Nine Queens is too Argentinean.", but now, I see how it worked, by putting Diego Luna, if he wasn't here, and they would've gone with an all american cast, the movie wouldn't have worked.But by putting him, they added all the latin characters and story and the spanish speaking which all worked great.

So all in all, the movie is good.
If you have seen Nine Queens, it isn't going to be as good, and you'll call it rip off, but that's what they tried to do so it's ok.
And if you haven't seen Nine Queens, you'll like Criminal a lot, but you still need to see Nine Queens.