Crime 101 (2026)

User Review

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  Barneyonmovies

  8 / 10

  WHAT I LIKED: Bart Layton's 'Crime 101,' is ripped straight out of the Michael Mann playbook. Set in LA? Tick. Melancholy and stylish score and cinematography? Tick. A criminal and a cop pitted against each other? Tick. But also like a good Michael Mann movie, the film is more about its characters' inner pain than it is its plot, as it focuses people who devote their entire lives to their work struggling to find happiness and inner peace.
  
  Chris Hemsworth's Davis is a diamond thief whose only business partner is a man who gathers intelligence about the jobs. Other than that, he has no family or friends, and when he meets a woman he's interested in (Monica Barbaro), it becomes clear how his secrets stop him from forming emotional connections. Then there's Mark Ruffalo's Lou, a Police investigator who's so obsessed with fnding Davis that he puts his professional reputatuon, and even his own and his colleagues' safety, on the line.
  
  Interspersed with a few neat set-pieces, the pair's cat and mouse game is tense and brilliant, especially as they're kept on each other's tail throughout. Along the way, Davis also meets an Insurance Broker for the super-rich (Halle Berry) and in a brief moment of desperation about her career, she decides to help Davis plan his last job, and then has a crisis of conscience and informs Lou what's happening.
  
  This provides a catalyst for the pair to collide, and they share a brilliant cab ride where Lou sees Davis' humanity before a tense final shootout in which Davis saves Lou's life. They both escape unscathed and help each other move on from their obsessive lives and start living for themselves. That's an emotionally satisfying conclusion to a character-focused crime thriller
  
  WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: It does feel as though it could have taken the characters' pain, conflict and rivalry a little further.
  
  VERDICT: Bart Layton's brilliant crime thriller 'Crime 101,' doesn't just echo Michael Mann in style, but in the way it focuses on and develops its characters.

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