‘Crime 101’: Chris Hemsworth, Halle Berry, & Bart Layton On Heist Films, Breaking The System, & ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ [The Discourse Podcast]

There’s a particular kind of confidence required to make a modern Los Angeles heist movie without flinching at the shadow of “Heat.” It’s the cinematic elephant in the room, the reference point that inevitably looms over any story involving meticulous thieves, dogged cops, and asphalt‑level tension. With “Crime 101,” filmmaker Bart Layton acknowledges that lineage without trying to wrestle it. Instead, he builds something adjacent: a grounded, contemporary crime film that uses the genre as a delivery system for deeper questions about identity, status, and obsession.

Based on the novella by Don Winslow, “Crime 101” follows a precise, disciplined jewel thief (played by Chris Hemsworth) whose carefully calibrated life begins to fracture as an obsessive LAPD detective (played by Mark Ruffalo) closes in. Sound familiar “Heat” fans? Luckily, we also have other stories running parallel, like Halle Berry as Sharon, a woman boxed in by institutional disrespect and professional diminishment, slowly realizing that the systems she has played by were never designed to reward her. The ensemble is stacked with Barry Keoghan, Monica Barbaro, Corey Hawkins, Nick Nolte, and more, but the film’s real engine is tone: tense, patient, and uninterested in clean moral answers.

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Joining The Discourse for two separate interviews, Layton, Hemsworth, and Berry dug into how “Crime 101” consciously avoids Hollywood shorthand while still delivering a propulsive, white‑knuckle ride.

For Layton, whose career began in pure documentary before evolving through the fact‑fiction hybrid “American Animals,” the appeal of “Crime 101” was never about competing with past heist classics so much as finding the film’s own pulse.

“I loved ‘Heat.’ I remember going to see it with my dad and just being completely blown away,” Layton said. “But that is its own thing. You’d be an idiot to try and compete or replicate it. Once I was writing the script and it had its own identity, I was like, ‘let’s do our thing. Let’s make something contemporary, with that noir quality, that delivers the suspense and the rollercoaster ride,’ but also something warmer, where the characters are more relatable and there’s more emotional connection.”

Those instincts come directly from Layton’s documentary background, which he described as something he’s always carrying with him. “When you come from docs, you have a keen eye for truth,” he explained. “It’s very seductive to go into Hollywood movie land where suddenly things get ridiculous. I really wanted it to be coherent. We shot on the streets, we shot real car chases, and we tried to keep it old‑school in the sense that it’s a real movie with real people. If you or I found ourselves in a high‑speed chase through downtown L.A., we’d probably clip some people.”

That grounding extended into research. Layton spoke with real jewel thieves as well as current and former LAPD officers. “Believe it or not, there are a lot of real jewel thieves out there,” he said. “You can write to them, and they’ll often write back. There were things that kept coming up: fractured homes, foster care, the absence of adult role models. All of that became central to how I built the characters.” Some of the wildest material came from the jewelers themselves. “The stories they had about being robbed were more outlandish than half the stuff I was writing.”

Casting brought those ideas into sharp focus. Layton recalled moments where scenes took on a life of their own, particularly between Halle Berry and Chris Hemsworth. “There are a couple of scenes between Halle and Chris that were electric,” he said. “You’re watching and you momentarily forget you’re the director. You’re just watching this incredible scenario play out.” A similar charge emerged in Hemsworth’s scenes with Mark Ruffalo. “They suddenly realized this wasn’t Marvel stuff,” Layton said. “Chris saw a different Mark show up, and Mark saw a different Chris. It was nerve‑racking for them, but very exciting for me because it benefited the scene.”

No one embodied unpredictability more than Barry Keoghan, the only actor Layton wrote a role for outright. “Barry is extraordinary because he’s unpredictable,” Layton explained. “He has danger and vulnerability at the same time. I would bring him in almost unannounced, like a hand grenade. The energy in the room changes. You see it in the movie, when he shows up, all bets are off.”

For Layton, crime is ultimately a narrative vehicle rather than an end in itself. “A heist genre is so good because narratively you’re always moving toward a big finale,” he said. “That gives me the opportunity to smuggle in things I’m more interested in like identity, status, obsession, this idea that we’re all chasing a number we think will make us feel like we’ve arrived. And then maybe you get there and realize you’ve given half your life to something that never actually gave you value.”

In a separate paired interview, Hemsworth and Berry leaned into what initially drew them to the material, with Hemsworth pointing first to the film’s restraint and its trust in the audience. “What it reminded me of was a nostalgia for the world it was creating,” he said. “The fact that it was going to be shot in L.A., we don’t see that anymore. But what really stood out was that the story didn’t bash the audience over the head with the answer. It allows ambiguity. It proposes a question without giving you the solution, and that’s left to the audience’s interpretation.”

For Hemsworth, that ambiguity felt increasingly rare in contemporary studio filmmaking. “There’s something respectful about not having to dumb everything down and explain every beat,” he continued. “People are far more intelligent than the cinema-going experience sometimes gives them credit for. They want to be intrigued. They want to investigate things themselves. That’s part of the fun.” Berry jumped in with a knowing laugh, adding, “We rush through things because we’re developing an attention span of a gnat today.” Berry echoed that sentiment, noting how contemporary storytelling often rushes past nuance, training audiences toward ever‑shorter attention spans.

For Berry, Sharon was an intensely personal role, one that connected directly to where she finds herself in life right now. “I’m a woman of a certain age, down that path of life,” she said. “When I read Sharon, I was like, ‘Oh, hell yeah. Let me tell this story in cinema that I’m actually living.’ Let me bring to life what I know women are actually feeling and thinking and suffering from.”

Playing Sharon became a way to imagine choices rarely afforded on screen. “I just let my alter ego run wild and think, what would I do if I could do anything?” Berry explained. “I know women will feel seen and heard by this character.” She was also quick to broaden the lens beyond gender alone. “Women feel that, but there are certain men that have felt that way too,” she added. “We’ve all felt diminished or not given what’s rightfully ours. Sometimes the systems are bigger than we are, and we become victims of that. How do you get around that? It’s complicated for all of us.”

Both actors repeatedly circled back to Layton’s documentary background as the glue holding those ideas together. Hemsworth described a constant push away from familiar movie language. “Bart has a real integrity and a great BS meter,” he said. “If something felt fabricated or like a trope, he’d steer us somewhere more unpredictable. This wasn’t about playing someone all-knowing or bulletproof. My character lives in discomfort. He’s questioning who he is, what he’s doing, what his purpose is.”

That internal reckoning is central to the film. Hemsworth explained that his character has convinced himself that fulfillment lies in material wealth. “He literally has a number in mind,” he said. “If he reaches that number, he thinks it will solve all his problems. And then there’s this inner protest that arises — something in his psyche saying, no, it’s about something else. It’s about human connection, love, support, community — all the things he’s lacking.”

The conversation eventually drifted, as it inevitably does, into franchise territory and playful Marvel deflection. Asked about Storm and Thor’s roles in the ever-mysterious “Avengers: Doomsday,” Berry responded by pretending she couldn’t hear the question at all, calmly sipping her coffee and scanning the room. Hemsworth, equally game, joked that even a real answer wouldn’t be believed.

When the conversation pivoted to hypotheticals instead, the tone shifted from evasive to gleeful. “I’m playing Storm,” Hemsworth deadpanned, before leaning into the absurdity. “There’d be a certain alchemy that would occur, wouldn’t it? We’d either cancel each other out or it’d be a match made in heaven. I’d finally have someone who understood weather patterns and how to manipulate them.”

Berry didn’t hesitate to escalate the joke. “We would just be too much for the world,” she said. “It wouldn’t be fair. The franchise would be over.”

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“Crime 101” opens in theaters February 13. Listen to the full conversations with Bart Layton, Chris Hemsworth, and Halle Berry below via the podcast embed or watch the YouTube video featuring our conversation with Hemsworth and Berry below.

The Discourse is part of The Playlist Podcast Network, which includes Deep Focus, Bingeworthy, and more. We can be heard on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, and most places where podcasts are found. You can stream the podcast via the embed within the article. Be sure to subscribe and drop us a comment or a rating, as we greatly appreciate it. Thank you for listening.

Mike DeAngelo

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