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A Solid Crime 101 Does its Homework

Crime 101 is probably the nearest thing a modern Hollywood blockbuster can get to something like Heat. That is largely a compliment though it is a touch backhanded in terms of both a few of the things the movie holds back on and the Hollywood environment it is produced within. Clearly director Bart Layton is inspired by Heat, with this being an L.A.-set crime film about a master thief and the cop trying to track him down. I suppose the pairing of Pacino and De Niro has its Gen-Z analogue in casting two Avengers in these respective roles. But the movie, which is based on a work by Don Winslow, does have some genuine ideas and aesthetics of its own, limited in some respects but very interesting in others.
The movie follows three main threads that eventually intersect and inform each other. Chris Hemsworth plays Mike, a meticulous and successful though deeply lonely jewel thief who has been evading authorities for years. However his style of robbery and penchant for avoiding violence, not to mention the pattern of his crimes along the 101 highway of the greater Los Angeles area has been noticed by a grizzled LAPD detective Lou Lubesnick, played by Mark Ruffalo, who against the scepticism of his department pursues his theories around the case, while also dealing with the fallout of a trial separation in his personal life. Meanwhile Sharon Combs (Halle Berry), an insurance broker for highly wealthy clients and with one of the companies that Mike targets, is dealing with the toxic culture of her work environment seeped in misogyny and ageism, ultimately connecting -though in different ways- with the efforts of both Mike and Lou.
From the start the film actively casts its characters as a kind of panoramic of Los Angeles -it begins in fact by juxtaposing their lives against an inverted L.A. skyline while the calm affirmations of Sharon’s transcendental meditation routine play out. It’s a curious device, if it is not matched substantively by the content of the film following it -the one occasion where Layton perhaps goes a bit too grandiose. The film is in fact quite grounded, as we see in the attention to the manner in which Mike carries out his jobs, to the rational if unconventional detective work from Lou, to the frustrations Sharon encounters with the layers of sexism she has to maneuver daily -a client who pressures her into firing a gun for the first time as a condition of sale. Each are very skilled and each very isolated.
All three are beacons of loneliness but the most pronounced is Mike, who lives his entire life alone -so much so that he takes the considerable risk of embarking on a relationship with Maya (Monica Barbaro), a woman who rear-ends him by accident. A thing to appreciate about Layton’s script is that like the classics of its genre, it is as interested in the lives of its characters outside of their relation to the story’s action. Mike is one of the beneficiaries of this, although his corner of the film is also a little bit hollow. Neither Maya nor the audience learns much about who he really is, and while for both his good looks can make up for it for a time, it is not a meaningful substitute for real development. There are hints here and there of the kind of background he has, and Hemsworth plays it decently to his credit, sombre and stoic, but he isn’t such an engaging presence on his own terms. This is not true of Berry’s performance, which is sharp and layered and surprisingly powerful -her best in years. And it is certainly not true of Ruffalo, who fits the film’s style and ethos better than anyone. Lou may be a bit of an archetype but it is one that Ruffalo takes to with astounding ease -he is gruff and confrontational, but by no means a ‘bad cop’ in the traditional sense, as he is highly competent and discerning, deeply empathetic, and has no patience for corruption for which he is at one point suspended. And even with the goatee he is given for the part, he looks the most natural of any of the major characters -apart from perhaps Barry Keoghan as another more violent robber Ormon who soon becomes a threat to Mike. It is Lou’s sections of the story, including the evolution of his run-ins with Sharon, that are the most engrossing segments of the movie.
Though he is involved in relatively few of the film’s big action set-pieces, several of which are car chases. And there hasn’t been an action movie (outside of perhaps the Fast and the Furious franchise) so interested in the car chase in several years. And in staging them, it is clear Layton is inspired by the classics -movies like Bullitt and The Driver. A couple of them are pure chaotic tension -a frantic Mike trying to escape through traffic- others have a cooler sense of suspense gradually ratcheting up, as when Mike is tailing Ormon on a motorcycle who himself is pursuing Sharon. In any case, Layton shoots with spatial awareness and a simmering pace -which he also applies well to the non-vehicular action scenes, such as in the climax. Refreshingly for a cop movie, there are few shoot-outs.
But there's also not a lot of grit. Layton's filmmaking is pretty accomplished and interesting in places; it is edited very sharply in a manner that fits the energy of whichever character it is following and there are a few spontaneous visual devices. Yet it lacks the sense of style of the kinds of films it emulates. Part of that comes down to just a few technical and budgetary disadvantages compared to earlier movies, but there is also the choice to emphasize realism in terms of the film's world. The look of Los Angeles is very neutral, the characters are not extravagant for the most part, and the story arcs are fairly conventional. This doesn't initially appear to be the case from that opening, but the film does evolve in that direction. Looking again back to Heat, that was a movie defined by its hyper-real atmosphere and its operatic characters and themes. Layton is no Michael Mann, but there are clearly some greater ambitions present in his work that come up short by virtue of the details of this movie's presentation -perhaps beyond his control, though a hindrance nonetheless.
The plot is woven together astutely though; Mike, Lou, and Sharon each playing their part and finding some catharsis in the process (Sharon's is a bit divorced but certainly satisfactory). The showdown between cop and robber pans out in an unexpected way and is ultimately perhaps a bit too clean, but Hemsworth and Ruffalo make good of it, drawing out of each other richer material than they got to express together in their MCU collaborations. Formula does ultimately hold sway in Crime 101, but not in an exhausting or offensive way. With one possible exception it is earned, and the film doesn't lose its cool over it. An engaging crime movie throwback that couldn't feel more fresh.

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