The big release for this past weekend was Scream 7, which won’t work for me mostly because I haven’t really seen Screams 2-6. That means my trip this weekend was to go see something I missed when it came out before, namely Crime 101, a movie whose title referred to a California highway and not a basic college-level course. Now, I had tried to see this movie once before, but, well, I ended up seeing Wuthering Heights instead somewhat unexpectedly.
That just means I asked a guy sitting in a row in front of me if I was in the right place when I arrived this time around.
A master thief who gives the name “Mike” when he meets people (Chris Hemsworth) has a few habits. He doesn’t want to hurt anybody. He robs insurance couriers because they have no reason to really fight back. He sticks close to the 101 highway. And he plans things very meticulously. As such, the LAPD thinks he is, in fact, multiple thieves save for one guy, Detective Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo), a guy with a low clearance rate, an old car, and a wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who is getting ready to leave him. However, Mike backs out of one crime he planned, so his underworld fence (Nick Nolte) has the unstable Ormon (Barry Keoghan) do the job instead. Ormon as none of Mike’s thoughtful planning or desire not to hurt anyone as he does what he does. And then there’s Sharon (Halle Berry), an insurance broker who is getting frustrated that her career isn’t going anywhere even as she works to sign super-wealthy clients to her firm.
As it is, Mike seems to have that “one last job” thing going on, helped a long by the fact that he’s got a love interest in the form of Maya (Monica Barbaro). But Mike is very reluctant to say much off anything about himself, and that leads to something I never thought I’d see: a socially awkward character played by Chris Hemsworth. Still, there’s a plan in place to rob a billionaire’s wedding for some diamonds, something that comes about when Mike and Sharon start talking and Ormon is following them around. Lou, meanwhile, is closing in with his own investigation. Someone might end up with a few million dollars’ worth of diamonds. Who will it be?
I wasn’t kidding about Hemsworth’s character being socially awkward. He plays the character as someone who, when he isn’t committing a robbery or recruiting someone to help him commit a robbery, is incapable of looking people in the eye, his head looking in all directions, and generally not saying much without some extreme reluctance. It’s a different performance from the actor, one I am not 100% sure works, but it was an interesting idea. Ruffalo is fine as the scruffy cop, Berry does a good job as a frustrated older woman seeing a younger one in the same position she used to be in at her firm, and Keoghan is properly unhinged. There’s not much to complain about with the performances here.
As for the rest of the movie, director Bart Layton does this interesting thing where actions that happen between edits have him switch characters. For example, a date between Maya and Mike has them put down their menus at the fancy restaurant they are at and decide to go someplace else, and it would be natural to assume the menus opening in the small diner are them, but it is actually Lou and his estranged wife having a final dinner together. The overall movie is smart, in a very adult manner, and how often do mature heist movies come out? Most seem more PG-13 affairs that kids can go to, but that’s not the case with Crime 101. It’s far from perfect, but it is worth a look for people who want a mature crime drama, not an action movie with a big, elaborate theft set piece in the middle of it.
Grade: B
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