Criminel

"Criminal" is an adequate Americanization of one of my favorite films of 2002, the delightfully twisty "Nine Queens (Nueve Reinas)."

Adapter/debut director Gregory Jacobs doesn't quite make up for the extra tension that Argentina's financial chaos added as an urgent back drop.

Some of the twists are too smoothly straightened out by focusing more on the older con man, here played by John C. Reilly, and his sister, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal without the original's sensuality, despite her low cut blouse.

Diego Luna is a mite young, but he's cast to turn Reilly's character into more of a manipulative mentor and less an apparent partner.

On its own, without comparison to the original, it's an amusing and workmanlike update of "The Sting" crossed with "The Grifters."