Crime 101 Review: Slick, Stylish…and somewhat flawed

Plot: A thief with a strict code of conduct and a mysterious past (Chris Hemsworth) is pursued by a down-and-out detective (Mark Ruffalo), while courting an ally in a high-end insurance broker (Halle Berry). Meanwhile, the thief is being hunted by an unhinged enforcer (Keoghan).

Review: Crime 101 is a project that garnered a lot of buzz even before production began. It’s a script that was the object of a bidding war and Amazon MGM Studios would walk away as the victor. Thankfully, Amazon will be giving the film a theatrical run and not just dumping it on Prime Video. 

Now that movie is about to release, the early reactions throw around the comparisons to Michael Mann’s Heat a lot. The similarities to the crime epic are definitely there, but there’s also dialogue in the movie that pays tribute to films like Bullitt and The Thomas Crown Affair. And that’s what you get a sense of — Crime 101 is attempting to be that classic kind of genre picture, but for a modern age. 

Writer/Director Bart Layton is pretty successful with having one foot in the past and his other foot in the present. This is a “meat and potatoes” cops and robbers film, but much of it also relies on advanced security tech, social media and tracking methods. The two biggest aspects that are unavoidable to compare to Heat are the lengthy focus on the characters’ lives and the dominant setting of Los Angeles. In fact, the title itself has a double meaning that ties closely to a very Los Angeles element. 

While the movie does an admirable job of following in the footsteps of Heat, it’s understandable that it doesn’t quite reach that bar. Even at 2 hours and 20 minutes, it feels like the movie has 20 more minutes that it wanted to show, but was either afraid to, chose not to or it was trimmed down. There are many good story elements in Crime 101 that I found myself interested in seeing more of, but the film couldn’t quite find the right balance and some of it was shoved to the side to move the plot forward.

Hemsworth has an interesting kind of role that I couldn’t quite put my finger on until thinking about it later. He’s a thief that has two sides to him. Professionally, he’s a well-oiled machine. He’s well put-together of course (the movie showcases his physique early on). He’s charismatic and confident when he’s on. However, when he’s trying to function in a personal life, he gets immensely awkward and becomes a complete mess, but not for the lack of trying. 

Meanwhile, Mark Ruffalo is very reliable in his role as the detective who has trouble playing with others — both at his job and at home. Of all the leads in this film, his story is probably the most cliched, but Ruffalo’s charm makes it work. His partner in the film is played by Corey Hawkins, who I loved as Dr. Dre in Straight Outta Compton and I’ve been hoping to see him more and more in projects, so his supporting role was a pleasant surprise.

Berry makes a lot of her role when, on surface level, it doesn’t sound as exciting as the others. However, her civillian arc would thicken as the movie goes along. She and Hemsworth play off each other well as their characters connect in various ways and the same can be said with her and Ruffalo in their scenes. You really find yourself rooting for her in her character’s storyline.

Then, we come to Barry Keoghan. While he made a brief appearance playing The Joker in Robert Pattinson’s The Batman, here, he REALLY gets to let loose. In every scene he’s in, he’s having a ball playing an unhinged psycho enforcer for the same crime boss that Hemsworth serves. Keoghan is that kind of wild card character that, when he shows up in a scene, the mood immediately turns tense as you don’t know what he’s capable of and what’s going through his mind.

This movie was a lot more character-based than I was expecting. A ton of time is devoted to the private lives of the characters and how their intanglement in all the heist cases affect their actions going forward. There are some timely themes about classism and how financial security plays a part in mental stability, which was a nice angle to explore. And the action, while more subdued than I was hoping in regards to carnage, is still effectively intense and the chase scenes are incredibly thrilling. It can really be seen that the filmmaker is a fan of the aforementioned Steve McQueen movies they referenced.

Frankly, the main thing that really brought the movie down a bit for me was the ending. There are a ton of seeds that were planted and things set in motion to explode for the finale and Crime 101 just didn’t stick the landing enough for me. I am not familiar with the source material it was based on, so it may be faithful, but it just didn’t do anything for me and I left the movie with a bit of a dissatisfied feeling, despite enjoying everything before it for the most part. I do recommend it for crime fans but it falls just short of something great. 

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