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If you can believe Thor as a shady bitch and the Hulk as a loser, ‘Crime 101’ is for you. Halle Berry: No notes.
Crime 101
Director: Bart Layton • Writer: Bart Layton, based on the novella by Don Winslow
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Halle Berry, Barry Keoghan
UK / USA • 2hrs 20mins
Opens Hong Kong February 26 • IIB
Grade: B+
Okay, admittedly Crime 101 is very, very, very indebted to both Heat and Michael Mann’s blue wash urban nightscape, as well as Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, with its focus on traditional, but extremely stylish, internal combustion engine transport. It’s got all the toys an Elusive Thief With A Code heist movie needs, particualy the muscular accoutrements of the master criminal: the really noisy car (why are you squealing away from the scene and drawing attention?), the slick suits, the meticulous apartment looking over super-smoggy Los Angeles through floor-to-ceiling windows. But I’ll admit it. I love this shit, and I love it even more when it’s based work by Don Winslow, arguably one of the best writers of this kind of crime thriller currently in the game. The kind where the city and the so-called good guys are glossy and official and righteous on the surface and rotted with disinterest and corruption underneath. Winslow’s pulpy, violent spin on the drug war in The Power of the Dog and Savages (skip Oliver Stone’s cowardly adaptation), and NYPD fuckery in The Force are page-turners/tappers, and he’s shown off a darkly comic element in novels like The Dawn Patrol.
Which is the long way of saying I could be coming to Crime 101 with a personal bias; it’s going to be hard not to enjoy. Sure enough this doesn’t need to be so long (regardless of how Heat meandered), and writer-director Bart Layton takes his sweet time in weaving all the various, utterly familiar threads together. Hold on to your hats: there’s a “one last big score” on the docket. Sigh. But it’s Winslow so that undercurrent of griminess is there to add some much needed texture and let you overlook some of the sillier parts.
Mark Ruffalo is not that short
First off, this is not a lesson in doing crime. The 101 of the title refers to California state highway 101, which runs from Los Angeles to the Oregon border, and makes for the perfect getaway route for all the heists master jewel thief Mike Davis (A Middle Chris, Hemsworth and right now #2) pulls for his fence and possible father figure, Money (Nick Nolte at maximum gravelly). He’s confounding the cops because he’s never violent, leaves zero DNA and seems to have access to significant inside information. On his trail is Lou Lubesnick, played by Mark Ruffalo in his second schlubby pariah detective in a year (after HBO’s Task), and his more politic partner Tillman (sudden smoke show Corey Hawkins, The Last Voyage of the Demeter). The film starts with Mike completing his perfectionist’s morning routine and then heading out of his perfectionist’s apartment and into LA traffic, part of a larger, cleverly orchestrated montage that introduces the main players, at least by sight.
There’s not an overabundance of standard action in Crime 101. The joy in the film comes from watching the multiple cat-and-mouse games being played among the characters, and watching how each is slowly but steadily lured across a personal Rubicon. Also caught in this swirl is Sharon (Halle Berry), a 53-year-old insurance broker to HNWIs that’s been waiting to make partner at her firm for 11 years, constantly strung along by her asshat boss Mark (master of smug, Paul Adelstein), bystander Maya (Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown), who Mike tepidly asks out after she rear-ends him, and Money’s psychotic yet clearly traumatised back-up thief Ormon (Barry Keoghan). There are plenty of chases and pistol-whippings but the real story is in how Mike, Lou and Sharon fail, fail some more, and yet somehow find their way out of a mess of their own making.
DOP Erik Wilson, who did such warm and sunny work on the Paddington films, and such vibrant, expressive work on Better Man, makes the most of the hazy-sunny LA locations and its eerily dark urban backstreets, but avoids over-stylistic flourishes that can be distracting, or worse, ostentatious. Crime 101 doesn’t need creative angles and showy oners, when so much of the action is internalised; the camera’s nice and still when Mike and Maya go on their first date, so we can see Mike struggling mightily for some kind of normal. It’s a far more grounded approach to the heist than Layton took in 2018’s underrated American Animals, which wilfully blurred the lines between documentary and fiction in its recreation of a book heist and the inevitable clash of personalities and memories. This time around lines from A to B are more direct and less subject to interpretation, and ones that almost everyone can agree on. And it must be said, morally ambiguous and vaguely fucked up (this thin sketch is one of the film’s weak points) is a good look on Hemsworth and he should do it more often. Throw in a thumping score (by Blanck Mass, AKA Benjamin John Power) and a stellar crew of supporting players in small parts – Jennifer Jason Leigh, Asghar Farhadi regular Payman Maadi, Tate Donovan, Babak Tafti, Devon Bostick – and you’ve got a heaping plate of comfort food. Crime 101 is one of those solid and stolid ’90s-style crime thrillers that used to open every weekend. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it doesn’t really have to. Besides, watching Halle Berry read her pig of a boss for filth in a climactic scene – while the younger woman in the office has a revelation – is good enough for me.