I should start by addressing the elephant in the room: Bart Layton is very clearly a fan of Michael Mann. Making a heist film set in Los Angeles post-Heat is as risky as trying your hand at demonic possession post-Exorcist – you’re setting yourself up for a particular level of scrutiny. Layton does himself no favours by including a lot of sweeping aerial shots of the LA skyline, an electro-tinged score and casting one-time Mann star Chris Hemsworth as “Mike”, the taciturn, socially awkward but hyper-competent criminal mastermind just trying to make enough money to get away clean. So obvious is the inspiration you half expect Lou – the grizzled, mid-marriage-breakdown LAPD detective played by Mark Ruffalo – to yell “She’s got a great ass!” at any moment.
Still, if you’re going to steal, steal well, and Layton’s previous crime credentials in The Imposter and American Animals speak to a sincere interest in the genre. Crime 101 sadly lacks the intriguing a hook that his two ripped-from-the-headlines projects had – the string of high-profile robberies along California’s Highway 101 aren’t particularly intriguing in the minutiae, and we’re kept at the same awkward distance from the perpetrator as his love interest Maya (Monica Barbaro) whose presence feels mandated rather than necessary. Instead the focus is the parallel lives of Mike and Lou, the only good cop in Los Angeles, who’s determined to bring him in. Ruffalo can’t help but twinkle under the gruff exterior – an older, greyer, not particularly wiser Philip Marlowe – sighing through his failing marriage as he moves his cat and meagre belongings into a beachfront bachelor pad.
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Halle Berry and Barry Keoghan round out the cast, the former a glamorous, put-upon insurance underwriter for high network individuals, the latter a psychotic criminal brought in by Mike’s fence (Nick Nolte) to undercut him on a job. A number of Berry’s scenes are with Ruffalo; they’re a winning combination, so much so it’s a shame there’s not more of them together. Her thankless gig making nice with odious billionaires while being repeatedly passed over for promotion is a familiar trope but Berry’s charismatic enough to pull it off, even in an ensemble stretched to capacity. The desire to create a web of characters as complexly mapped as the LA road network is to the film’s detriment; much like a good heist crew, you’ve got to know when the cut the dead weight.
The sparing action scenes are slick and well-choreographed, notably the film’s first, which sets up Mike’s particular brand of neurosis. Hemsworth is refreshing playing against type, glimmers of a traumatic childhood occasionally peeking through a concrete exterior. Similarly are glimmers of something real and interesting in Crime 101 that would have made the story richer, such as the constant references to the cavernous financial inequality within the city that needles at the three central characters in different ways. The lack of curiosity about its own material prevents Crime 101 from truly setting itself apart; moments of intrigue and minor thrills seem destined to fade away in the memory rather than inspire future imitators.