“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.
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