“Crime 101,” the new Amazon MGM L.A. noir drama, has its heart in the right place, but as bruised criminals with a heart of gold know, intentions are never enough. Using Michael Mann’s “Heat” as its north star—a seminal crime classic that tracks criminals trying to pull scores, the relentless detectives trying to capture them, and the collateral damage of the obsessive lifestyles that complicate both sides of the law—the film is trying to run that same playbook.
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The variations on the codes of honor that define “Heat”—men who live and die by not breaking their strict, self-defined rules—are that the criminal’s (Chris Hemsworth) code is no violence and quick escapes to avoid problems. The cops, particularly a dogged detective (Mark Ruffalo), aren’t as ruthlessly laser-like in their commitment to the job, but essentially live by a do-the-right-thing ethos. There are a few wrinkles: a disillusioned high-end insurance broker (Halle Berry) working for an ethically shady company, and Barry Keoghan as a dangerous, unpredictable young thief in the mix. But otherwise, it’s operating on a similar track, and it makes for a film without many surprises or twists. And that is, more or less, the problem.
“Crime 101” feels too familiar, trying to say the same things about what happens when the job overwhelms the life, and what happens when you try to carve out something personal because the grind of it all isn’t enough.
Hemsworth plays the elusive jewel thief Mike Davis. His metier is meticulous planning, avoiding violence, and a number in his head big enough for him to cash out when he reaches it. He’s not quite the character in Mann’s “Blackhat,” but there are similarities there, too. He also lives in one of those sparse and empty, “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner” type apartments. Attachments are the enemy. Did Mike study “Heat” too?
On the other side of the fence is Detective Lou Lubesnick (Ruffalo), a schlubby cop who has given too much to the job, and it’s costing him his marriage. Obsessed with the 101 freeway serial criminal and his efficient modus operandi—no violence, a penchant for a highway exit—Lubesnick’s fixation means he’s not clearing enough cases and it gets on the nerves of the cops around him, particularly his cynical Detective Tillman (Corey Hawkins) and his superior Police Captain Stewart (Matthew Del Negro), disinterested in anything other than clearance rates.
Unaware of who the other is, the two men still play a circling cat-and-mouse game as the detective inches closer to discovering who Mike is. Meanwhile, Money (Nick Nolte), Mike’s long-time financier, starts to feel doubtful about his protégé’s nerve, so he hires the more sociopathic Ormon (Keoghan) to tail him and uncover what score he’s planning on his own.
Two women get mixed up in it, too: Maya (Monica Barbaro), a girl Mike dates after a meet-cute fender bender, and Sharon Colvin (Berry), the aforementioned 53-year-old insurance agent who feels undervalued and overlooked by her misogynistic bosses; ripe for falling on the wrong side of the law since the righteous path has led her nowhere. But Maya is a wafer-thin character who almost doesn’t need to be there, and Sharon mostly plays like a plot device to get Mike to his financial dream number, despite the very true note of how men disregard her because of her age.
“Crime 101” isn’t entirely predictable, but it does feel like a fait accompli. The audience is well aware that Mike and Lubesnick are on a collision course and that everyone else is either cannon fodder or an antagonistic obstacle. Try as he might to make “Crime 101” distinct, filmmaker Bart Layton—who also wrote and adapted the film from Don Winslow’s novel—doesn’t imbue it with enough flair or idiosyncrasies to make it feel human, lived-in, and novel.
At a leisurely paced two hours and twenty minutes (which feels much longer), whereas “Heat,” even at a nearly three-hour runtime, moves like a shark, “Crime 101” isn’t nearly as compact, economical, or clinically exacting.
While the constant “Heat” comparison may feel annoying, well, welcome to the film. Layton, the indie filmmaker behind “Imposter” and “American Animals,” tries to differentiate things by drawing from gritty, character-driven 1970s crime cinema like “The French Connection,” “The Friends Of Eddie Coyle,” “Bullitt,” and Dustin Hoffman’s wonderfully underappreciated “Straight Time.” The movie wants to be a little baggier and shaggier, which are good instincts if you’re trying to step out from the shadow of Mann’s masterwork. Unfortunately for Layton, none of it adds much original dimension.
That’s where the back half starts to sag. The movie keeps setting up inevitabilities rather than building tension. You can feel the gears turning toward the same endpoints—Mike’s “rules” getting tested, Lubesnick’s obsession narrowing his vision, Ormon pushing the situation into something uglier—and the film rarely finds a sharper way to escalate or complicate the line it’s drawing. It’s not that the pieces don’t work; it’s that they click into place in ways you’ve seen before, with just enough genre competence to coast, but not enough personality to stick.
When the story finally narrows to the inevitable showdown, it lands with the blunt force of a foregone conclusion rather than the crackle of something earned. The actors do what they can—Hemsworth plays cool professionalism, Ruffalo leans into the grayed, worn-down fixation, Berry injects some wild volatility—but the film never finds that extra gear that turns procedural motion into compulsion. In the end, “Crime 101” knows the “Heat” playbook; it just can’t execute it with the same level of cumulative detail, contradiction, and character texture that makes those familiar moves feel like fate rather than schedule. [C]
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
