Crime 101 sounds like the classic dumped action thriller either in January or on a streaming service starring Chris Hemsworth. But when you replace your standard working man director with Bart Layton, that “mediocre” status immediately elevates into a new movie plane. You become deserving of the big picture action thriller….starring Chris Hemsworth.
Hemsworth plays Mike Davis. He’s the Omar of Los Angeles, robbing shady middlemen moving jewelry between places, but more meticulous and OCD so he stays out of suspicion. He bows out of his mover Money’s (Nick Nolte) latest heist, hoping to reset and maybe trying to go on a date with the woman who crashed into his car Maya (Monica Barbaro). But that courtship is probably doomed from the start; detective Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo) thinks he’s got a bead on the jewel robber off the 101 in LA. And, Money sends loose cannon Barry Keoghan, err, Ormon to keep tabs on Mike, in case he gets thirsty for his next score, which may or may not involve high end insurance broker Sharon Combs (Halle Berry).
I wish Bart Layton was just a tad more prolific, but clearly his time goes to good use. Like American Animals his last film, he wills the standard heist movie into a higher stratosphere. Bold start, setting a movie in the same place Heat built a masterpiece out of, in the same genre. That means Layton is pushed from both sides: he’s gotta live up to the action heist history while also not succumbing to streamer action’s worst tendencies. Instead of coming out fast and free wheeling, Layton eases us into Crime 101, with laconic, but deliberate, details into how a day in the life of Mike’s “job” feels. And because of how beautifully he directs the movie, using self-help quotes with an ephemeral LA 101 backdrop, he sets the tone perfectly for what we’re going to experience…for a while. Cause when the time is right: the action kicks into high gear very quickly, and dissipates just as quickly as the laser focused Mike would have accounted for.
And then Lou Lubesnick and Sharon Combs gets introduced, one by one. That’s the flag Crime 101 plants itself on: the triple threat of Hemsworth, Ruffalo, and Berry. The script doesn’t jump from heist to heist to heist; Layton makes sure the choices come from the leads over the plot, giving us ample time to get to know these people, and how they operate. In a good way, you feel characters moving like pieces on a chess board, heading towards a checkmate of their own making. Like his last film, Layton’s themes aren’t deep, but they are interesting: the haves and have nots, a purpose driven life, what is the right thing to do. Each lead is on their own journey with these questions, leading to specific choices and answers from their actions. I particularly like how Layton and Ruffalo developed Detective Lou, and how Halle Berry isn’t just the eye candy but instead gets to show us why she won an Oscar a little bit. Simply put, that means when the big third act heist kicks into gear, we actually CARE about what’s gonna happen, and feel even more tension as the power dynamics and plot twists affect these people we’ve become invested in.
I’m bummed if I have to wait another 8 years for a Bart Layton film. But great things come to those who wait, and you’ve officially won me over sir. So much so that you’re on the short lists of the best Barts next to Simpson. Even though Bort has got you both beat.