Crime 101 Review: A slick, slow-burn heist that surprisingly steals your heart
- 11 hours ago
- 3 min read
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If you walked into the theater expecting Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo to smash things up in spandex, you’re in for a very different, very quiet ride. Crime 101, directed by Bart Layton and based on Don Winslow's novella, lands in theaters as a sophisticated, if slightly overlong, ode to the classic heist films of yore. It’s got a stacked deck of a cast—including Halle Berry, who frankly doesn't age, and the agent of chaos himself, Barry Keoghan—but it trades the usual adrenaline-junkie pacing for something closer to a simmer. It’s essentially Heat on a low-carb diet: stylish, moody, and surprisingly invested in the mundane dramas of its pretty people.
What really hooked me wasn't the robbery mechanics, but the unexpected character beats. We have Hemsworth playing against type as a polite, "gentleman thief" who is shockingly awkward at dating (watching a literal Norse god fumble a text message is a specific kind of joy). Then there's Ruffalo, playing a detective who starts out looking like a walking divorce settlement but slowly finds his groove—and even takes up yoga—as he closes in on his target. It’s a cat-and-mouse game where the cat is finding inner peace and the mouse is just trying to be a decent guy who happens to steal diamonds.
However, the movie isn't without its "yeah, right" moments. There are plot conveniences that grease the wheels a little too liberally, specifically involving characters flipping their motivations on a dime just to keep the runtime under three hours. Barry Keoghan is electric to watch, as always, but his character feels less like a person and more like a narrative wrench thrown into the gears whenever the writers wrote themselves into a corner. Is this Crime 101 review leading to a recommendation? Let’s just say that despite the drag, the payoff involves more than just stolen gems.
