REVIEW: ‘Crime 101’ Is A Fun But Familiar Thriller

In the depicted version of Los Angeles in Crime 101,  you might be just one lane over from the person who’s about to change your life. In the opening act, characters who won’t meet or intersect for 30 minutes (or even two hours) drive past one another on the highway. These moments of passing are mere chance, but everything from here on out is calculated.

Mike (Chris Hemsworth) is a jewel thief who’s been thrown off his game and needs a way in to his next big score. Sharon (Halle Berry) is an insurance broker for wealthy clients, but is increasingly disillusioned as her boys’-club firm refuses to promote her.

Lou (Mark Ruffalo) is a detective whose reputation is on the line when he theorizes that a string of high-profile robberies was committed by the same thief. Their paths cross slowly, but Crime 101 takes its time laying the groundwork. Mike’s a slick thief with a bloodless style. It’s almost charming how he completes a robbery while deliberately ensuring no one gets hurt.

Director Bart Layton imbues the film with a documentary style.

But for Mike’s crime boss, Money (Nick Nolte), executing the heist is the most important thing of all. When Mike calls off an upcoming robbery, Money enlists the violent, ruthless Ormon (Barry Keoghan) to get the job done instead. Ormon’s flashy antics catch Lou’s attention, and the next heist involves Sharon’s newest client, which is where Crime 101 kicks into high gear.

Director and screenwriter Bart Layton comes from a documentary background, and it shows. Southern California’s many facets are on full display here, from chic Santa Barbara to a Los Angeles strip mall to the Beverly Wilshire hotel.

Its disparity in wealth is key here, too: Tate Donovan’s Steven is a multimillionaire seeking to have his upcoming wedding insured (guests are receiving diamonds as party favors), while having “not a lot of money” is one of the few truths Mike is willing to tell Maya (Monica Barbaro). It’s a commitment to truth in a film featuring heightened stakes and dialogue guilty of the modern “second-screen” issue.

Crime 101 is pure throwback. 

There’s a throwback quality to Crime 101, like the kind of crime thriller we’d get five or six of per year in the 1990s or early 2000s. There’s an old-fashioned good time to watching these characters attempt to outrun and outsmart each other. Its influences are clear, from Heat to Steve McQueen’s filmography (Bullitt and The Thomas Crown Affair both get shoutouts). It’s tremendously fun, building to a thrilling climax that questions each person’s loyalty to their own causes.

Where Crime 101 starts to slip is its equally bloated and brisk runtime. Clocking in at two hours and twenty minutes, the film spends an extraordinary amount of time setting up its premise, yet treats its protagonists as real people only in the climax.

The closest we get to knowing a character from start to finish is Sharon, whose yoga classes contain daily meditations that punctuate the film. We see glimpses of tormented pasts and a harried present (Barbaro’s Maya works for a seemingly demanding publicist, who is mentioned once).

Despite strong performances from the cast, the film struggles to define the characters.

Jennifer Jason Leigh appears only once in the film, aside from a shot where her back is to the camera, and her singular scene as Lou’s estranged wife doesn’t give her the chance to make the impression we know she is capable of.

Barbaro sparkles in an otherwise thinly-veiled role; we learn more about her during a fender-bender meet-cute with Mike than we do over the rest of the film. Perhaps the commitment to realism rests only in the way Los Angeles is portrayed, not the Angelenos themselves.

It’s enough to make one think there are hours of usable, and emotionally necessary, footage left on the cutting room floor. If a film this long only hints at depths in its characters, perhaps a miniseries might do them more justice. 

Anchored by solid performances and a compelling story, Crime 101 hints at a film that might have soared. Hemsworth, Berry, and Ruffalo are a dynamic trio of layered, complex protagonists, leading their individual storylines with nuance and power. There’s a tremendous amount of potential, but the film struggles with dialogue and character development, as though there’s more territory to explore. That might be the real crime here, but it’s worth stealing away two and a half hours of your time, all the same.

Crime 101 is out now in theaters nationwide.