Cert – 15, Run-time – 2 hours 20 minutes, Director – Bart Layton
The pattern of a thief’s (Chris Hemsworth) heists leads multiple parties towards him as new relationships start to tangle with each other and his criminal activities.
The inspiration of 90s crime flicks are all over Bart Layton’s follow-up to his slickly messy heist docudrama American Animals. Many have pointed to Heat as a key influence, but there are conventions from many major titles of the decade in this slight throwback film to that era. The writer-director is juggling a number of different characters as he follows thief Mike (Chris Hemsworth) as he starts to try and inch out of committing jewel heists for Nick Nolte’s ‘Money.’ While Money hires a young biker with much more abrupt and violent tendencies (Barry Keoghan) to deal with his other source, Mike also has Mark Ruffalo’s looked-down-upon Detective Lou Lubesnick hot on his tail after noticing a series of patterns in his heists.
As the pair get closer to Hemsworth’s lead he finds himself forming a possible romantic relationship with Monica Barbaro’s Maya, while also forming schemes with undermined insurance broker Sharon (Halle Berry), perhaps for one last big job for the both of them. At any one time Layton appears to have three things happening at once in a film packed with characters, and stars. While often two of these strands have enough push and detail to hold engagement the third, which changes throughout, feels like something of an afterthought, causing it to lag behind.
It’s a problem that becomes more evident the longer the film goes on. And at just under two-and-a-half hours it definitely feels at least 25 minutes too long. Momentum may still be held, especially in closer interactions between Mike and Lou as the journeys and investigations of both characters have tangled and overlapped numerous times before without coming face-to-face thanks to the ways in which characters lead one to the other and work into each other’s perspectives as each figures starts to wind towards bringing criminal and detective together in an investigative chase.
There’s not always a slickness to Crime 101, but there is something of a suaveness to a number of scenes throughout. Hemsworth carries his role well and brings a certain amount of charisma to his character, especially when being more conversational with the likes of Barbaro and Berry’s characters, where Mike is clearly most relaxed; although occasionally still plotting and structuring his plans. In doing this there’s not quite a feeling of slow pacing, or that the film is taking its time, there feels movement of elements throughout without quite a restlessness from the film itself, only perhaps the audience.
This is a film that wears its influences but sometimes borrows from them a bit too much. Mirroring and falling under the conventions and winding key narrative elements of different kinds of heist flick together in the arcs of the overlapping characters. It means that the busyness of the film can lead to at least one strand faltering under lack of detail, or smaller characters not getting much screen-time, but when it finds itself caught in the drive of a particular moment and strikes the right tone of cool confidence there’s a solid engagement factor to be found here that may not quite have a sleekness, but carries itself well enough to get away with things.
With so many characters and plot strands often at least one thing gets left behind and feels less detailed amongst the overlapping threads that make up Crime 101. It may be a bit too long and not entirely slick, but it carries itself well enough to get past its more conventional and less weighted elements.
Just A Little Bit Random 