Crime 101 opens in theaters on Feb. 13.
A few minutes in to Crime 101, with the streets of Los Angeles whipping by, a tense, thudding soundtrack gnawing at you while carefully laid plans are set up with unassuming close-ups only to be paid off in full-circle moments, you might start to think that you’ve seen this movie before. If you find yourself enjoying the cross-cut montage of the main characters crossing paths on the 101 and the evocative LA-at-night atmosphere, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong in feeling a little deja vu.
Like an entry level college course from which the film takes its name, Crime 101 is proficient in all the right elements of a heist movie. Director Bart Layton and the stacked cast led by Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo and Halle Berry do what they can to take some chances around the periphery, veering from the formula in a few interesting ways. But like a high-end thief who strays from his MO, the movie ultimately pays for it in the end.
Crime 101 doesn’t actively do anything bad. In fact, the film tries to do a handful of interesting things, but only does each of them half as well as it could have with a little more focus. The pull of familiar heist movie tropes, the cat and mouse of Heat or the “one last score and I’m out” of… well, Heat again, proves too strong and too thoroughly reproduced in Crime 101 for the variations to comfortably fold in. It all adds up to a pretty standard heist flick featuring some flourishes to the formula that feel more out of place than like a creative riff on the genre.
For example, Chris Hemsworth’s Mike Davis is an awkward, almost cripplingly shy man who, at times, seems to be neurodivergent. It’s definitely a departure from Thor or any number of the comedic supporting roles he’s shone in over the years. He’s a charismatic presence on screen no matter who he’s playing and his performance here works in the moments where he struggles to connect with a would-be love interest or when he scrubs himself down before a job to avoid leaving DNA evidence behind. However, the characterization gets a little lost when he shows no compunction about car chases or shaking down insurance executives.
Mark Ruffalo’s Detective Lubesnick and Halle Berry’s broker Sharon, even Hemsworth’s thief, all suffer under the unjust treatment of awful bosses and the same dead-end sense of futility. Both Sharon and Detective Lubesnick wear the bitterness well, but are dismissed by their superiors in ways that are equally frustrating and formulaic. The trio also share a clarity as to who the real villains are in their world, leading to no small amount of Robin Hood style class warfare, with the film dipping a toe into a thread of wealthy white people buying and hoarding Black and Native American art while stopping short of a proper eat-the-rich kind of theme.
The real problem is none of this is allowed to be what the movie is “about” because Crime 101 is so determined to fall in line with the crime thriller genre that the flourishes feel more like bugs than features.
On the upside however, Barry Keoghan is an energetic little blast of a character. His version of the dangerous wild card thrown into the mix brings a rabid energy to the proceedings. He’s desperate to prove himself, bouncing back and forth between a skilled criminal and a clear psychopath.
Nick Nolte (now with 100% more gravelly-voice) does his thing as the elderly fence / father figure to Mike, but doesn’t get much else to play with outside of what the elderly fence / father figures usually get to do in movies like this.
Frankly, one of the real highlights is a one-and-a-half scene cameo. Jennifer Jason Leigh, in her screentime with Mark Ruffalo, helps make a tragic scene grounded and hilarious as an argument erupts about how much of a “beach guy” Lubesnick may or may not be. As far as scene partners go, they’re a pair I’d love to see more of.
By the end of the movie, though, the scales are tipped toward familiar crime movie tropes as opposed to the variations on the pattern. There are interesting ideas at play throughout the film that get swapped out like one getaway car for another in service of a plot that’s less compelling than any one of them.
Ultimately, there really isn’t anything wrong with Crime 101. That might be its biggest problem, though.
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