A Familiar Drive Down the 101
A few minutes into Crime 101, with the streets of Los Angeles whipping by in that golden-hour glow crime thrillers love, a tense, thudding soundtrack gnawing at your nerves while carefully laid plans are established with unassuming close-ups only to be paid off in satisfying full-circle moments—you might start to think you’ve seen this exact movie before. If you find yourself enjoying the cross-cut montage of the main characters’ paths crossing on the 101 freeway and the evocative LA-at-night atmosphere, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong in feeling a strong sense of déjà vu.
And honestly? That’s both Crime 101‘s greatest strength and its most frustrating limitation.
Like the entry-level college course from which the film takes its name, Crime 101 is proficient in demonstrating all the right elements that make a heist movie work. Director Bart Layton (known for the brilliant documentary-thriller American Animals) and the impressively stacked cast led by Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, and Halle Berry do what they can to take some creative chances around the periphery, veering from the established formula in a few genuinely interesting ways. But like a high-end thief who unwisely strays from his proven MO, the movie ultimately pays for its indecision in the end—caught between innovation and convention, unable to fully commit to either.
The Problem With Playing It Safe
Crime 101 doesn’t actively do anything bad—and maybe that’s the problem. In fact, the film tries to incorporate a handful of interesting ideas and variations on genre tropes, but only executes each of them half as well as it could have with a little more focus and commitment. The gravitational pull of familiar heist movie tropes proves too strong. The cat-and-mouse dynamics of Heat, the “one last score and I’m out” desperation of… well, Heat again, the corrupt systems and sympathetic criminals—these elements have been so thoroughly reproduced in Crime 101 that the film’s attempted variations feel more out of place than like creative riffs on the genre.
It all adds up to a pretty standard heist flick featuring some interesting flourishes to the formula that ultimately feel more like bugs in the system than intentional features. You can see the more daring movie Crime 101 wanted to be peeking through at the edges, but it never quite breaks free from the constraints of genre expectations.
Chris Hemsworth Against Type (Sort Of)
Take Chris Hemsworth’s character Mike Davis, for example. He’s written as an awkward, almost cripplingly shy man who, at various points in the film, seems to exhibit neurodivergent traits. It’s definitely a departure from Thor or any number of the charismatic, comedic supporting roles Hemsworth has excelled in over the years. He’s such a naturally magnetic presence on screen—regardless of who he’s playing—that seeing him attempt to shrink into himself and avoid eye contact creates interesting cognitive dissonance.
His performance genuinely works in the quieter moments: when Mike struggles to connect with a would-be love interest, his social awkwardness palpable and painful to watch, or when he meticulously scrubs himself down before a job to avoid leaving any DNA evidence behind, the ritualistic precision suggesting obsessive tendencies. These scenes hint at a more character-driven thriller that would dig into what makes someone like this turn to crime.
However, the characterization gets frustratingly lost when Mike suddenly shows no compunction about high-speed car chases through residential neighborhoods or aggressively shaking down insurance executives. The script can’t quite reconcile the shy, anxious man with the confident criminal, and so we’re left with a character who feels like two different people depending on what the scene requires. It’s a missed opportunity to explore how someone who struggles with normal social interaction might actually excel in the high-stakes, rule-based world of heist planning.
A Cast United By Terrible Bosses
Mark Ruffalo’s burnt-out Detective Lubesnick and Halle Berry’s increasingly desperate broker Sharon, along with Hemsworth’s methodical thief Mike, all suffer under the unjust treatment of awful bosses and share the same dead-end sense of futility that comes with working within corrupt systems. Both Sharon and Detective Lubesnick wear their accumulated bitterness exceptionally well—these are lived-in performances from actors who understand exactly how exhaustion and disillusionment manifest physically—but they’re dismissed and undermined by their superiors in ways that are equally frustrating to watch and disappointingly formulaic in execution.
The trio also shares a clarity as to who the real villains are in their world, which could have led somewhere interesting. This awareness leads to no small amount of Robin Hood-style class warfare, with the film dipping a toe into a thread about wealthy white people buying and hoarding Black and Native American art as investments and status symbols, while stopping frustratingly short of developing this into a proper eat-the-rich theme that might have given the film more contemporary bite.
There are genuinely interesting ideas at play throughout Crime 101—ideas about economic desperation, cultural appropriation, neurodivergence, systemic corruption—that get swapped out like one getaway car for another in service of a plot that’s ultimately less compelling than any one of these half-developed threads.
Barry Keoghan Steals Every Scene He’s In
The real problem is that none of these potentially rich thematic elements are allowed to be what the movie is actually “about” because Crime 101 is so determined to fall in line with crime thriller genre expectations that its more interesting flourishes feel more like accidental bugs than intentional creative features.
On the significant upside, however, Barry Keoghan is an energetic little blast of unpredictable energy. His version of the dangerous wild card thrown into a carefully planned operation brings a genuinely rabid intensity to the proceedings. He’s desperate to prove himself to the crew, bouncing back and forth between demonstrating he’s a skilled, disciplined criminal and revealing himself to be a clear psychopath who might jeopardize everything. Keoghan has mastered playing characters who exist right on that knife’s edge of charming and terrifying, and he deploys that skill to great effect here in his limited screen time.
Nick Nolte (now with 100% more gravelly-voice than even his usual gravelly-voice) does his reliable thing as the elderly fence and surrogate father figure to Mike, providing the weathered wisdom and emotional grounding these films require. But he doesn’t get much else to work with outside of what elderly fence/father figures usually get to do in movies like this—deliver warnings about “one last job,” offer hard-won wisdom, and provide a stakes-raising vulnerability late in the film.
Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Brief Brilliance
Frankly, one of the film’s real highlights is a scene-and-a-half cameo that deserves special mention. Jennifer Jason Leigh, in her limited screentime opposite Mark Ruffalo, helps make what could have been a purely tragic scene both grounded and unexpectedly hilarious as a bitter argument erupts about how much of a “beach guy” Lubesnick may or may not be. It’s the kind of lived-in, specific relationship detail that makes characters feel like real people with histories rather than chess pieces being moved around a heist plot. As far as scene partners go, Leigh and Ruffalo create such natural chemistry that it’s genuinely disappointing we don’t get more of them together. I’d watch an entire movie about these two characters.
When Playing It Safe Becomes the Problem
By the time Crime 101 reaches its climax and resolution, the scales have definitively tipped toward familiar crime movie tropes rather than the more interesting variations on the pattern the film occasionally flirts with. There are genuinely compelling ideas at play throughout the film that get swapped out like one getaway car for another in service of a plot that’s ultimately less engaging than any one of those underdeveloped threads.
The heist itself is competently executed—no pun intended—with the usual complications, double-crosses, and last-minute adjustments. But because we’ve seen these exact beats in Ocean’s Eleven, Heat, The Town, Baby Driver, and countless other entries in the genre, there’s no real sense of surprise or discovery. You can practically set your watch by when the plan will start going wrong, when the unexpected betrayal will occur, and when our protagonists will reveal they were actually three steps ahead the whole time.
What’s missing is the sense that the filmmakers have something new or urgent to say about crime, class, desperation, or any of the themes they gesture toward. Ultimately, there really isn’t anything egregiously wrong with Crime 101—and that might actually be its biggest problem. It’s a film that seems content to competently execute the basics rather than risk failing at something more ambitious.
The Verdict: Passing Grade, But No Extra Credit
Crime 101 is an okay enough entry into the heist movie canon—and in saying that, I can feel how damning “okay enough” sounds for a film with this much talent involved. Director Bart Layton and stars Chris Hemsworth, Halle Berry, and Mark Ruffalo all clearly try to add creative flourishes to the old reliable crime thriller formula, but these tweaks can’t escape that formula’s gravitational pull for long enough to establish a whole new MO.
The performances are solid across the board, with Keoghan and Jennifer Jason Leigh providing particular sparks of energy that make you wish the entire film had their anarchic, unpredictable spirit. The cinematography captures Los Angeles in all its night-lit glory, making the city feel like a character in itself. The pacing is brisk enough to keep you engaged even when the plot becomes predictable.
But here’s the thing: competence isn’t the same as inspiration. While Crime 101 might be able to teach a masterclass on the foundational elements of the heist genre, its biggest struggle is giving audiences a reason to care about this particular story when we’ve seen these exact moves executed before—often better, occasionally worse, but always with more conviction.
For a movie night when you want something familiar and well-crafted, Crime 101 will certainly deliver. But if you’re hoping for the next heist film that redefines what the genre can do, you’ll need to look elsewhere.
Rating: 6.5/10
Have you seen Crime 101? Did you appreciate its adherence to heist movie formulas, or were you hoping for something more daring? What’s your favorite heist movie that managed to both honor and subvert genre expectations? Let us know in the comments below!
