“Crime 101”
Bart Layton’s neo-noir crime drama has a killer cast draped in a B-movie sheen. The aloof antihero is Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth), who executes precise jewelry heists. Mike knows every detail of the courier or shop he’s knocking over and every job is done within a mile of LA’s 101 freeway, hence the name, shared with Don Winslow’s novella from which the movie is adapted.
Layton seamlessly weaves divergent threads that might otherwise have meandered. We meet Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo), a detective who vexes his department head by pursuing justice and truth instead of closing cases, and Sharon Combs (Halle Berry), an insurance investigator who also is up against it with her corporate hierarchy. Berry could have given her character the pop, sizzle and verve of Vicki Anderson (Fay Dunaway) in the brilliant 1968 version of “The Thomas Crown Affair.” Berry instead plays Sharon as a woman who was once all that but has been worn down by sexism, misogyny and promises broken.
Still, she’s good at her job. So is Mike. Astute at assessing risk, he turns down the next job from his handler (Nick Nolte), who pitches it to Orman (Barry Keoghan), a punkish up-and-comer whose methods are far different from Mike’s. The things bad bosses do to good employees will have you wishing Mike, Lou and Sharon had an HR department to lodge a complaint with.
The taut script gives the ensemble rich material, shaping characters more deeply than seems possible in their brief time on screen. Hemsworth is especially good as Mike, switching from socially awkward to debonair as the job demands it. His troubled past bubbles up as he starts to date a young publicist (Monica Barbaro, who steals a few scenes). Layton and crew tie things up neatly, but the ending is where the movie is least compelling. The gems in “Crime 101” are stashed along the road.
“Pillion”
Alexander Skarsgård is physically imposing and sculpted from Adonis clay, but what makes him eye-catching are the boundary-pushing roles he chooses. A portrait of primal rage as Amleth, the original Hamlet, as seen in Robert Egger’s “The Northman” (2022). In “Pillion” bloodlust is replaced by leather-clad lust. Skarsgård’s Ray is a member of an English biker club that’s into B&D and S&M games. A “pillion” is a motorcycle’s rear seat, and in BDSM subculture this is where the “subs” sit, at the pleasure of their “doms”—real Tom of Finland guys. To be clear, Ray does not sit on the pillion.
That seat belongs to Colin (Harry Melling). The two meet at a countryside pub on Christmas night where Colin and his dad are part of a barbershop quartet serenading the locals, including Ray and his leather-clad posse. An invite to a dark alley leads to the unzipping of presents. Ray and Colin continue to meet, with caveats: cook me dinner and watch me eat it, sleep on the floor and don a dog collar.
Skarsgård is bold and unbridled, but this is Melling’s film. Colin’s wide-eyed gaze at once conveys wonderment, curiosity and conflict. He lives at home with his parents (mom has cancer) and while they accept Colin for who he is, they have concerns about Ray. There are camping and fishing sojourns where subs are regularly hogtied and vulnerable as the doms build bonfires and nip on whiskey. The sex is graphic but not necessarily erotic.
The film is drawn from Adam Mar-Jones’s novel “Box Hill: “A Story of Low Self-Esteem,” and what interests writer/director Harry Lighton is above the belt, inside the head and heart.
Both Ray and Colin display a complex vulnerability, and have a nuanced chemistry that gives the film for all its an uneasy tenderness. Leather and lash may not be your cup of tea, but the exposed, yearning heart is universal.
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