Crime 101 Movie Review: Visually Flawless Metropolitan Thriller?

Crime 101 Movie Review and Ratings 

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Barry Keoghan, Halle Berry, Monica Barbaro, Corey Hawkins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nick Nolte, Tate Donovan, Devon Bostick, Payman Maadi, Babak Tafti, Deborah Hedwall, Paul Adelstein, Drew Powell, Matthew Del Negro, John Douglas

Director: Bart Layton

Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars)

In “Crime 101,” you will find a thousand other films. In theaters since February 12th, it’s a film that does nothing wrong: a crime drama and action thriller with its tense moments, its chases, and its stars. It’s enjoyable. But the work written and directed by Bart Layton, director in 2018 of an interesting hybrid, a little bit’ documentary, a little bit’ heist films like American Animals, feeds on a preconceived imagination made up of thieves, cars, and streets as arteries of a city that is a great sleeping protagonist. And there is nothing wrong with doing so. Distributed by Eagle Pictures and directed by Bart Layton, the film is not only an adaptation of Don Winslow’s short story of the same name, but an ambitious cinematic effort that seeks to bring the genre “cops and robbers” back to its noblest and most tactile dimension.

Everything is easier if Don Winslow’s words are behind it. Starting from the author’s story of the same name, Bart Layton brings to the stage Crime 101. A thriller that, from the very beginning, sets the record straight, allowing for a tension that is never entirely explosive, yet sedimented around the characters who, as the genre dictates, follow precise archetypes. Effective, well-researched elements of a criminal canvas that, as tradition dictates, blends and confuses the good with the bad, the law with the outlaws.

Crime 101 Movie Review: The Story Plot

It takes over half an hour for Crime 101 to introduce all its characters. A triptych of protagonists where each is in their own way a ‘loser’, shadows frustrated by a life that seems stuck on rusty tracks. Mike (Chris Hemsworth) is a professional thief. He piles money upon money with targeted, clean, and deathless jobs, but he can’t even sustain the gaze of his interlocutor. Detective Lou (Mark Ruffalo) has been on his trail for a long time, but his wife is away, he drives a beat-up car, and no one in the department believes his lead. Sharon (Halle Berry), on the other hand, is aging behind a promotion that will never come in a society full of misogynistic sharks, until she gets involved in a possible robbery.

Layton gradually makes them cross paths as they glide over the nervous system of a crime film paradigmatic city like Los Angeles. If Crime 101 has a godfather, that godfather is in fact Michael Mann. Author to whom Layton obviously not only watches, but openly makes up for himself with one of his masterpieces, Heat – The Challenge, the action thriller par excellence, where LA, its streets, and the criminals with no past with houses overlooking the beach were already crucial.

Crime 101 Movie Review and Analysis

The enormous windows of Mike’s impersonal home, wide open on the sunsets reflected in the Los Angeles sea, are much more than references. Images in which the film tries to support the psychic spaces of impossible feelings (the one with Monica Barbaro’s Maya) that characterize the very staid rhythm of Crime 101, which lasts two hours and twenty minutes. A script on the trail of the gentleman thief, put on the ropes and forced to tear up the routine and play it all the moment the crazy variable of another unscrupulous thief enters the field (Barry Keoghan, in the usual role of the ‘strange’, a little’ crazy, a little’ dissociated). The film assigns its psychoses to the role of the bug introduced into the system and which disrupts from top to bottom an already precarious pattern, which permanently blows up plans and makes data unreliable.

Without the audacity of revolution, Crime 101 lives on various little insights. Like the obsession with numerical quantification and ratings, Mike chases a sum of money to reach before quitting to quit forever. Lou is overwhelmed by a low case resolution rate, Sharon lives by estimating the wealth of billionaires, while in the evening, he only hopes to obtain a satisfactory sleep score. A common thread that branches again through that invisible network that unites the city and that qualifies it as a main character, the great (evil?) organism to which everything is voted and in which everything is lost, flowing between worries that depersonalize, abstract, and make behavior binary. Zeros or ones, like the numbers that make up the number of the street that gives the film its title, and which is the one along which Mike carries out his robberies.

Here too, Layton limits himself more to suggesting, to creating an intuitive underlying structure in which, however, nothing is characterized as a strong element. Nothing differs from the task of functionality, of managing the progress of a film that does not excel in adrenaline injection or even in intimate descents. However, it finds its own pleasant balance, a melancholic and old-fashioned fascination, with an ending that smooths and fits together, bringing the triptych of stories together with a good-natured – and perhaps a little naive – pardon for the regenerated morality of the protagonists.

Crime 101 It’s a sort of urban western, with a firm and confident pace, advancing while following the rhythm of a deep breath. A thriller on choices, on the nuanced definition of roles, on permeable destiny. Behind the metallic orchestra of LA, dried by any semblance of beauty and, indeed, brought back, as if it were – again – that violent and unbalanced of the seventies, written and praised by James Ellroy in Pray Detective. Speaking of ideas, indebted to Michael Mann’s cinema, Bart Layton is aware of the narrative material available, and therefore tries in every way to support it without too many jolts, relying on a cast of certain impact that, without distorting certain patterns, manages to give emotional three-dimensionality to the appearance, and therefore connects directly with the public.

Of course, if there is a sinkhole – and a nice big one too – that one concerns durability. The editing by Jacob Secher Schulsinger and Julian Hart, constructed slavishly to the syncopated soundtrack and electronics by Blanck Mass, goes on for over two and a quarter hours, becoming, in the long run, excessive and certainly misleading with respect to the dryness of the story. At the bottom, Crime 101 is a one-piece film, bony and marble (even too much) to see and read compared to the genre imagery from which it takes direct inspiration. More generally, it is the noir transfiguration of imperfect humanity, victim of events yet prone to change. Whatever the cost.

The beating heart of the film is the silent duel between Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo. The first abandons (at least in part) the hero’s aura of being larger-than-life to embody a cold, intelligent criminal, driven not by brutality but by a personal code of ethics. Mike is not a villain in the traditional sense of the term: he is a professional, almost a criminal craftsman, and Hemsworth interprets it with measure, letting an underground vulnerability emerge that makes him human and, at times, surprisingly empathetic. Ruffalo, for his part, sketches a detective far from the clichés of the tormented but infallible policeman. Lubesnick is a man who doubts, who makes mistakes, who risks being sidelined. His obsession is not only professional, but identity-based: solving the case means proving to himself that he is still up to it. As they chase each other from a distance, the two characters end up looking more alike than they’d like to admit.

Alongside the two protagonists, there is a cast of great depth: in addition to Nicholas King Nolte, we also find Halle Berry, Barry Keoghan, and Monica Barbaro, who enrich the narrative with characters that escape a single definition. Each of them contributes to dismantling the classic paradigm of the “good cop versus bad criminal”, instead showing a nuanced moral universe, where personal motivations matter more than labels. Layton insists precisely on this ambiguous ground. Crime 101 does not celebrate the wrongful, but observes its internal logic, almost scientific, comparing it with that –no less ruthless– of the system that should punish it. The result is a film that reflects on how thin the lines between legality and illegality, between obsession and dedication, between justice and revenge can be.

From a formal point of view, Crime 101 mixes precision and fast pace. Mike’s robberies are carefully planned, but the story never develops in a completely predictable way: unexpected circumstances test the protagonists and keep the suspense high without giving too much away. The tension remains constant, alternating moments of control and sudden upheaval, without ever sacrificing the internal logic of the story.

Layton thus constructs a thriller that knows how to be elegant and engaging, capable of surprising the viewer even when everything seems to proceed according to a seemingly perfect plan. Crime 101 is configured as a reflective thriller, capable of entertaining but also questioning the viewer. Although moving within recognizable coordinates, the film finds its own identity in its choice to tell the story of crime as a mirror of the humanity of its protagonists. And, as the title suggests, more than just a robbery story, it feels like a lesson –the first, perhaps– about what really distinguishes those who chase the law from those who break it.

The Duel: Hemsworth Vs Ruffalo

The real driving force of the film is the chemistry between the two protagonists, who here dismantle their public image linked to the world of superheroes:

• Chris Hemsworth (Davis): In one of his most mature and unusual roles, Hemsworth plays a criminal “esthete”. Davis is a methodical ghost who lives by an iron decalogue. The actor manages to portray this part, so distant from his usual roles, with extraordinary effectiveness, giving us a silent, cultured, and dangerous character.
• Mark Ruffalo (Lou Lubesnick): If for Ruffalo, solidity is almost a certainty, he shines in the role of the worn-out detective who follows instinct. The intellectual confrontation between him and Hemsworth is electrifying, a challenge between two men who, despite being on opposite sides, end up looking inexorably alike.
• Loose Mines and Sore Notes: Barry Keoghanconfirms himself as a pure talent. His character is an unpredictable fury that breaks into Davis’s precision, even though —and he is one of the moles in the film here— he deserved much more space. On the contrary, Halle Berry seems a bit’ subdued: not for lack of charisma, but for a character management (Sharon) that always seems to remain one step behind the strength of the two male protagonists.

A Potential Not Entirely Expressed

Despite being a film full of dense content, Crime 101 leaves a bittersweet feeling. The central theme is powerful: feeling betrayed by the people you trusted and the solitary search for your own path to happiness. However, the narrative structure presents imbalances:

• Rhythm and Climax: The film takes a long time to build (the beginning is a bit slow), building a monumental climax towards a final event that, paradoxically, slips away too quickly. The final twist is almost rushed, leaving the viewer with the thought that the resolution of such a well-accumulated tension could be better developed.
• Character Development: The atmosphere is vibrant, and the characters’ backgrounds are fascinating, but often only barely hinted at. There is a constant perception that the story needed more breathing space: some psychological dynamics and secondary figures (such as Keoghan or the icons Nolte and Leigh) seem sacrificed in favor of the main plot.

Crime 101 Movie Review: The Last Words

Urban thriller, emotional noir. From Don Winslow’s story, director Bart Layton brings Crime 101 to the stage. Tense and reasoned construction, never totally explosive, yet engaging with respect to context and stage: a stylized, violent, unequal Los Angeles. Great cast, from Chris Hemsworth to Mark Ruffalo, great soundtrack, and a great ending. However, the bone seems far too stuck, and the duration breaks the pace. Crime 101 is a visually flawless metropolitan thriller, driven by the excellent performances of Hemsworth and Ruffalo. While Layton’s direction is masterful and the pacing magnetic, the film suffers from a hasty ending and poor development of supporting characters (such as Keoghan and Berry).

Crime 101 is a beautiful, magnetic, and visually impeccable film, a return to “adult” cinema that has long been missing. Layton’s signature guarantees superior technical quality, and the performances of Hemsworth and Ruffalo are sensational. However, that hint of regret remains: the feeling that, with a more balanced management of the times and a greater depth of the supporting actors, we would have been faced with the definitive masterpiece of the genre. Nice, but it could have been even better.