Crime 101 Review: Almost Thrilling, Almost There
A measured heist in LA that never truly heats up.
Not terrible, but not that good - the potential is visible, but never fully realized.
Synopsis
A Los Angeles detective pursues an elusive thief who teams up with an insurance broker for one last heist.
Good Points
Los Angeles setting
Mark Ruffalo’s worn-down energy
Barry Keoghan
Bad Points
Hemsworth’s character lacks spark
Hemsworth and Ruffalo scenes underwhelm
Action sequences are competent but meh
Dialogue sometimes too flat
Crime 101 looks good, where everything feels polished and calm.
Chris Hemsworth manages to avoid the usual smarmy criminal archetype here, but that restraint does come at a cost, as I never really felt much of a connection to him, nor did I care about the character at all.
Mark Ruffalo on the other hand is pretty solid, and his back-and-forths with Hemsworth should have sparked the tension of two predators circling each other, but it all feels rather muted, and the verbal chess I wanted were frustratingly absent.
To be fair, that isn’t the actors fault.
The Los Angeles setting is decent though - Sleek homes, and the highways give the world a quiet confidence - but it just exists, all polished and calm, and that calm sometimes drifts into too much flatness.
Oh, and Nick Nolte comes across very frail and shaky, and manages to somehow pull attention away from the story, while Barry Keoghan, by contrast, at least injects some unpredictability - even when he does go a bit over the top - it’s at least more engaging than much of the otherwise flat energy in the film.
Berry’s character never lands.
Halle Berry has an intriguing subplot here too, but the film never really digs deeply enough, where the half decent ideas behind her role that could have gone somewhere, only flicker briefly before fading.
And for a movie about jewel theft, the action sequences are again, too restrained, and the story opts for a careful, measured pace, which is intentional but disappointing.
Everything in Crime 101 hint at some deeper ideas, none of which are brought to life, and all the energy it should be building upto is just sapped from scenes, especially in terms of the dialogue.
The film’s rhythm is steady - maybe too steady.
Final Verdict
Crime 101 had everything to be sharp, tense, and thrilling, but instead, it plays it too safe, but the film is watchable though, competent, and occasionally enjoyable.
But safe is not what I wanted from a movie called Crime 101.