Written and Directed by Bart Layton, based on the novella by Don Winslow | 139 min | ▲▲▲▲ | In Cinemas
What a pleasure to watch a masterfully crafted thriller, one that feels like the product of another era when these kinds of movies appeared regularly at the multiplex. Critics before me have compared it to Heat, which is fair though lacking some of the gravitas that Pacino and DeNiro brought to their roles. Hemsworth himself worked with Michael Mann in Blackhat, though fewer comparisons with that one are likely to be made.
In this movie Hemsworth is Mike Davis, also known as James, a Los Angeles professional thief. He’s a very careful, nervous even, and diligent not to leave any DNA and not to hurt anyone in his work — even as he’s shot at, which happens early on in the story. He plans ahead, with the help of a hacker who gathers information from social media and emails. Working on catching him is Detective Lou Lubesnick (a shaggy Mark Ruffalo starting to look like Peter Falk), who has noticed his quarry has a pattern — he hits his targets up and down the 101, the Pacific Coast Highway.
Lubesnick’s at the end of a relationship (a brief appearance from Jennifer Jason Leigh) and under pressure from superiors to hit his arrest targets. Meanwhile, Davis is at odds with his fence, Money (Nick Nolte), who hires a new, younger dude to keep tabs on Davis — Barry Keoghan, who shall henceforth be known as Shifty Barry, a nickname given to him by the good people on the Empire Film Podcast. This while Davis starts planning a new heist, approaching an insurance broker, Sharon Combs (Halle Berry), for information — just as she’s feeling squeezed out by the men in her firm. Davis is also considering a romantic relationship with Maya (Monica Barbaro) something his work doesn’t allow for very often — trusting people isn’t really in the cards for him.
Sure, the parallels between Davis and Vincent Hanna from Heat are many, along with the storytelling dynamic that bounces between a world of crime and the cops, though the way Crime 101 distinguishes itself is by being set in an even more recognizably noirish landscape — this is a Los Angeles where corruption is seething in every institution, from the cops to big business to criminal enterprise. Each one of these characters has an opportunity to walk the straight and narrow, and each one bends the rules a little or a lot to get what they want — and some live to regret it. The script is clever in what it reveals and what it chooses to hide, with characters using tech in a way that feels entirely 2026.
All of this is enveloped by some of the slickest universe building I’ve had the pleasure of sitting through in ages — the dazzling inverted shot of the 101 highway at night that opens the film, plenty of little detail in the reality of LA from the homeless on the streets to the gaudy jewellery stores, all supported by a terrific, throbbing score by Blanck Mass, and a solid cast where even the smaller roles are vivid and memorable.
This picture asks a lot of Chris Hemsworth, who while being a capable actor is mildly miscast here. At no time does he genuinely seem dangerous, which you’d think would be a requirement of his gig. If anything, he seems like a dude who’s in the wrong line of work for his disposition. Fortunately, Ruffalo is superb — though I did have flashbacks to Thor Ragnarok when Davis and Lubesnick finally meet — as is Shifty Barry, Berry, and especially Barbaro, who shines with every moment she gets, but her subplot deserved more meat to really sell the love connection between their characters.
Still, this is a movie with an extended running time that genuinely flies by, never losing a beat in its pacing or plotting. It’s a truly satisfying genre exercise worth seeing on the biggest screen around.
